


Red America: Green Light

by WulfenOne



Series: Red America [4]
Category: X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-13
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-12-27 19:11:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 25,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12087519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WulfenOne/pseuds/WulfenOne
Summary: Life is tough in Red America for Lorna Dane and her daughter Liberty, but she gets by as best she can - even if Jim Logan is a stumbling block she isn't sure she can get over.





	1. High Voltage

Lorna Dane finished her dance with a flourish, the clear, glitter-laced paint that coated her naked body beginning to run ever so slightly as she held her arms above her head and then took an expansive bow. It did this every night, thanks to the combination of the heat of the dismally-ventilated bar and the effort of dancing so energetically, but Lorna had long since grown used to it and took it in her stride as part of the job. As long as she danced well and left her public feeling entertained, she thought it was a small price to pay. Retreating off the stage as discreetly as she could, she returned to her dressing room, clad only in a robe that she had left just behind the curtain at one side of the stage. Dabbing the sweat from her forehead with a small towel, she thought again how much she would enjoy a hot shower to clean herself off a little. She didn't think Frank, her boss, had arranged for her to have any private "sessions" with Russian soldiers this evening, so she was looking forward to having some time to herself. It was always nice, she thought, not to have to try extracting information from drunken Russkies who were more interested in pawing clumsily at her private parts than in having any sort of conversation. She found her dressing room, pushed open the door with her free hand, and then slipped inside, closing the door behind her.

She turned – and found Jim Logan sitting in the room's single chair, leaning back against the wall and gulping a mouthful of beer from a long-necked bottle. She shrieked in surprise and felt her heart jump into the back of her throat. "Jesus, Jim," she said, when she had managed to get her breath back. "Do you have to show up like that  _every time_  you come here?"

A smile cracked Jim's weathered, hairy face. "Yup," he chuckled. "Sorry, darlin' – I just love the look on your face when you see me, that's all."

Lorna raised an eyebrow. "You're an asshole, you know that?" She crossed the room and opened the door to her small bathroom. "I'll be in the shower. You can wait if you like, but don't expect to get an eyeful while I'm getting dressed. You want to see that, you can damn well pay the door charge like everyone else."

"Maybe you should wait until you hear what I came here to ask you, Lorna," Jim said matter-of-factly, just as she was stepping through into her bathroom. "It might just change your mind."

Lorna's fingers slipped off the door-handle and she returned her gaze to where Jim was sitting. Folding her arms, she inclined her head to the right slightly and took a deep breath. "I doubt that, somehow. But go ahead: surprise me. What do you want this time, Jim?"

"I need someone to do a little under-the-wire work for me," Jim said. "I figure you're the best person for the job."

"No way," Lorna snapped. "I'm not a soldier. You leave me the hell out of your damn war."

Jim paused for a moment, and then said "No offence, kid, but the moment you started givin' me information, you made it  _your_  damn war too."

"Don't try and guilt-trip me into this, Jim. I find you your information the way I do for a damned good reason," Lorna said, spitting the words out as if they were knives. "I have a daughter, remember? You think I'm going to risk leaving her on her own? You can spend your life fighting the Ivans if you like, but my daughter needs me. I'm all she's got, and I'll be damned if I put her in danger just to satisfy your ego." She drew in a juddering breath, ran her hands over her face, and then pointed to the door. "I think you'd better leave."

Jim started to say something, but the words died in his throat as Lorna speared him with her angry glare. "Okay," he said at last, holding his hands up as if to ward her off. "Okay, I get the message. I'll find somebody else."

"Good," Lorna said, her jaw tensing almost painfully, before she continued "Have a drink on me outside if you like, but I don't want to see you here when I get out of the shower, got it?"

"Got it," Jim replied, and walked towards the door. As he opened it, he paused, and turned his head just enough so that she could see his left eye. "You change your mind, you know where to find me."

"Yeah." Lorna folded her arms across her chest. "I wouldn't hold your breath, if I were you."

She watched him leave, and let out a long breath when she finally couldn't hear his footsteps any longer. When the room was totally silent, she realised that her hands were shaking, and she clenched her fists tightly, feeling her nails dig so deep into her palms that they were almost drawing blood. She stood perfectly still for a few minutes, doing nothing but feeling her heartbeat slowly return to normal. When she felt able to do so, she slipped into the shower for ten minutes, feeling the hot water wash away all the tension she had just acquired, and then dressed in a plain white t-shirt and blue jeans. She pushed open the door to her dressing room after throwing on her battered leather jacket and tying her long green hair back into a ponytail. A loosely-curled ringlet of it escaped and bounced down to the left side of her face as she slung her kit bag over one shoulder while she walked through the bar towards the exit, and she tucked it behind her ear, just to keep it out of the way until later.

Predictably, one of the patrons decided tonight was the night he would try his luck with her. Lorna rolled her eyes as tonight's swarthy, unshaven specimen lurched drunkenly towards her with lust clearly etched onto his face, and then simply flat-palmed the idiot right in the centre of his sternum. The force of the impact knocked the breath right out of his lungs and dropped him to the floor, wheezing and coughing as he tried desperately to get some air back into his lungs. Standing over him as he tried to sit up, Lorna instead put her foot squarely on his chest and looked down at him scornfully, her hands curling tightly into fists as she did so.

"There's a 'no touching' rule for a reason, jackass," she said, her green-painted lips curling in disgust. "Try that again, and I'll break your fucking arm." It was probably a little over the top, she realised, but after what she'd just heard, she wasn't in the mood for any more crap. On the plus side, though, she thought it might stop any more unwelcome advances from men who could barely stand – at least in the short term, anyway. Storming out of the bar, leaving the unpleasant, sweaty little man picking himself up off the ground in utter humiliation, she walked over to her bike, one of the last surviving American-made motorcycles in New York, and sat astride it, hearing the engine purr loudly as she twisted the keys in the ignition. She opened the throttle and roared out of the parking lot, her hair whipping out behind her as the wind caught it, and covered the distance of the two blocks to her apartment far more quickly than she would have been able to at any other time. The Russian curfew virtually always ensured that she got home quickly, since it tended to make motorists get off the roads a lot sooner than they otherwise would do. Pulling up next to the battered apartment building that served as her home, she parked the bike and dismounted. Fishing her apartment block's door keys out of her jacket pocket, Lorna entered the building quietly and blinked a little as the sterile interior lighting hit her eyes. She walked towards the elevator, but then paused and headed to the stairwell instead, thinking that she might enjoy the exercise. Besides, these days there really was no telling whether or not the thing was even working. Climbing the stairs to the third floor, she put her keys into the closest door and pushed it inwards. The door opened only a little way before it stopped, the chain-catch on the other side pulling taut. Lorna muttered something crude under her breath and then called out "Mom, it's me. You can take the chain off now."

She heard movement on the other side of the door, and then it opened fully, revealing a middle-aged woman with greying brown hair and circularly-framed glasses, dressed in a functional red woollen sweater, white blouse and black cotton trousers with a fresh, sharp crease down the front. In her right hand, she held a baseball bat, and when Lorna looked at it in disbelief, she said simply "Well, you never can be too careful. You know how people can pretend to be somebody else these days, don't you?"

"I'm pretty sure I'm who I say I am, Mom," Lorna said wearily, kissing her mother on the cheek and taking off her jacket, hanging it on the coat-stand by the door. "How's Libby?"

"She's fine," her mother replied, in a slightly less confrontational tone, putting the bat down by the side of the door. "She's had a quiet evening – by her standards, anyway."

Lorna laughed. "You've fed her, then?"

"Fed and changed her, yes. She's sleeping now, but I'm sure she'll be happy to see you. She got pretty tired of having to play with Grandma all this time." Her mother smiled. "Poor thing was asking for you all evening."

"Well, I guess I'd better make up for lost time, then, hadn't I?" Lorna said, walking towards her bedroom, where her daughter's bed was situated.

"You know, if you got a job with better hours –" her mother began.

"Don't start that again, Mom," Lorna snapped, turning back to face her mother again. "My job was the best I could find at the time. I could do without all the drunken assholes that walk into that bar, sure, but I make good money dancing, and I can buy my daughter nice things with it. To me, that says I should keep doing it, and not risk everything on trying to get a lousy job with lousy pay at some lousy seven-eleven somewhere in Brooklyn. Now please, can we have this argument again when I'm not so damn tired?"

"All right, darling, but I'm only doing it because I worry about you," her mother said. "You know that, don't you?"

Lorna sighed. "Yes, Mom, I know you do – I worry about you as well. I guess that makes us just about even." She paused, rubbing at her eyelids with her fingertips. "I need to get some sleep. I'll see you in the morning, Mom."

"Goodnight, then," her mother said. "By the way, I'm planning on baking a cake tomorrow morning – I bought a new kind of icing sugar today and I need to test it out."

"Sounds great – I'll look forward to it," Lorna replied, trying not to sound irritated. "Goodnight, Mom."

She slipped into her bedroom and walked quietly over to the corner of the room where her three-year-old daughter Liberty was sleeping. She hadn't spoken to the father since long before her daughter was born – he had run away with his tail between his legs as soon as he heard that he might actually have to support a family, as opposed to just having sex with a hot stripper every week. Her mother had expressed serious concerns over the idea of calling her child by such a provocative name, but Lorna had been adamant about it – it was both a statement about how neither she nor her daughter needed anybody to get by in the world, and a way to thumb her nose at the Red Army and the Soviet government without getting the boot of a soldier on her neck. Besides, if she was questioned about it, she could simply lie and say that it represented freedom from the corrupt American ways of the past. She figured that that was a good enough defence for now – but if necessary, she was sure that she'd think up something better later.

"Hey, sweetie," she said softly, reaching down with one hand to stroke her daughter's fine, soft green hair. "Sorry I couldn't be around today, but I had to work. I'll spend some time with you tomorrow, I promise."

Moving across to her own bed, she pulled off her t-shirt, exposing first the alpha symbol tattooed onto her right shoulder, and then the omega symbol on her left, and then put on the plain one she had tucked under her pillow. Taking off her boots, jeans and socks, she slipped under the covers of her bed and, after a few moments of trying to find a comfortable position, closed her eyes. Sleep came fairly quickly after that.

* * *

Lorna opened her eyes with a start. Explosions thundered through the streets a few blocks away, the usual dawn chorus of New York that greeted her every day. The sound was, as usual, mixed with Libby's fearful wails, as she heard the noise filter in through the open window and echo softly around the room. Reacting to the more immediate concern, Lorna swung her legs out of bed and rushed to pick Libby up, hugging her to her bosom and whispering comforting words into her ear, in order to try and quiet her daughter's panicky shrieks. As she was doing so, Lorna walked across the room and switched on the television, afraid of what she might see despite herself.

The sight that greeted her confirmed her worst fears: Soviet tanks were trundling down the cracked road, their turrets rhythmically pounding shells into an already weakened apartment block. Chunks of stone crashed down onto the street below, shattering on impact and sending puffs of stone dust in all directions, and splinters of glass exploded in all directions. Then she heard a voice, its volume augmented significantly by a loudspeaker (presumably not just for the benefit of the people it was being directed at, but for the civilians in the surrounding area as well).

"Attention rebels," the voice said, with an air of smug over-confidence. "You are surrounded and, if you do not surrender, you will be killed to the last man."

The camera recording the raid swivelled around to reveal who it was who was speaking, and Lorna saw a Red Army officer with a megaphone standing in front of two tanks. Instantly, she recognised the cruel and unforgiving face of Colonel Norman Osborn, one of the many Americans who had risen to high places in the Soviet military. She recalled seeing him on television before, when he had formally accepted control of New York from Commissar-Colonel Braddock, and she also remembered seeing the increased levels of Red Army troops on the streets immediately after he had taken command. She'd thought that it couldn't get much worse than it had been under Commissar- Colonel Braddock's rule... but she'd clearly been wrong. After all, this wasn't the first time she'd seen Colonel Osborn at the forefront of an assault on the rebels holed up at various locations in the city; just as they were doing now, the Soviet-controlled news programmes were always keen to show him in an overwhelmingly positive light, as a morally-spotless hero of the proletariat. Lorna almost found herself wishing for Commissar-Colonel Braddock to return – at least she had not treated the television as a tool for self-aggrandisement, and had not courted the public's affections so vigorously. Against her better judgement, she had often found herself expressing a grudging respect for the woman's shrewd restraint, brutal and merciless though she might have been. Colonel Osborn's approach, on the other hand, caused her nothing but nausea. He radiated a hunger for power that she found utterly repellent.

The scene shifted away from the raid itself and returned to SAFN's impossibly-photogenic blonde and blue-eyed anchorwoman, Tatiana Kempinski. "Today," she said, a smug little smile crossing her lips as she spoke, "Comrade-Colonel Osborn has begun an assault on rebels hiding in the city limits, continuing the work begun by his predecessors. SAFN will continue to keep you updated on the progress of the brave Soviet army as they fight to preserve your rights and freedoms –"

 _You know, it's been five years, and you still talk the same old bullshit, lady,_  Lorna thought scornfully as she switched the television off, and then took Libby out of the bedroom in order to get some breakfast for the two of them. As usual, there were not many early-morning delicacies in the refrigerator, but Lorna always had enough food to get by, even if she couldn't live like a queen. Her neighbourhood was in a perpetually dire state of disrepair, but she always made sure that her larder was as well-stocked as she could make it. She owed Libby nothing less.

Popping open a container of cheap, mass-produced milk when Libby had clambered into the chair next to the kitchen table, Lorna took a swig from the neck of the plastic bottle and then wiped her mouth with the back of her other hand. "Do as Mommy says, not what Mommy does," she said when she saw Libby staring at her in disbelief. After getting Libby her usual two slices of toast and strawberry jam, she found a box of porridge oats in the large cupboard above the work-surface to the right of the sink. It wasn't much, but it would do for now. Heating the porridge oats and milk in a saucepan, she poured the hot concoction into a bowl and found a spoon with which to eat it, gently wiping her daughter's jam-covered cheeks with a piece of tissue paper.

"Mommy! Stop it!" Libby said indignantly, moving away from Lorna's fingers as if her mother was carrying the plague.

Lorna sighed. This was almost a ritual the two of them were required to perform these days. "Sweetheart, this is for your own good," she said. "You don't want Grandma seeing you with your face all dirty, do you?" Scowling, Libby folded her arms sulkily and let Lorna clean up her face, grunting in protest occasionally before Lorna let her get down from her seat. "Good girl," Lorna said encouragingly, ruffling her daughter's hair.

After going through the usual half-hour of trying to get Libby to clean her teeth, Lorna was relieved to see that her mother was awake, drinking her morning coffee on the small sofa in front of the television. "Morning, Mom," she said, her voice already full of weariness despite the early hour. Her mother smiled, clearly recognising the expression on her daughter's face.

"Morning, honey," she said brightly. "Would you like me to take over for you?"

"Oh God, please do," Lorna said. "I need to go get some groceries this morning. If you can watch Libby just until I get back, I'll owe you one."

"Oh, sweetie, you owe me about a million at this point," her mother replied, chuckling. "No problem. I'm sure we can find something to do."

"As long as it doesn't involve you trying to teach her blackjack again," Lorna said with a wry smile. "I'm onto you, Mom."

Kissing her mother on the cheek, Lorna left her apartment and took the elevator down to the ground floor of the building. There had been problems before with people leaving it not quite closed, since looters were common in this particular neighbourhood and would quite happily break into any apartment they could. She didn't think that there were many of them around at this particular time of day, but it was never a good idea to be complacent. Up ahead was a Soviet patrol of five soldiers, all of whom were armed with standard semi-automatic rifles and hand grenades; pretty excessive for a simple neighbourhood sweep, Lorna thought, but she didn't think it wise to question them. As she walked down the street towards them, one of them spotted her and strode over to stop her in her tracks.

"Where are you going, American?" he said, in thickly-accented English.

"Just to buy some groceries, sir," Lorna replied, making sure to keep her voice civil and as submissive as possible.

"Let me see your pass," the soldier said, holding out one hand and clicking his fingers impatiently, demanding the documentation that gave citizens of New York (who were not affiliated with the Red Army) permission to move around during daylight hours. Anyone caught without them was liable for a sizeable fine – or at worst, a spell in a local gulag. "Come on, American. Quickly." Lorna fumbled in her jacket pocket for the small card wallet that contained everything the soldier was asking for, and handed it over as fast as she could. The soldier took it and looked it over with a cursory examination, before handing it back so that Lorna could return it to her pocket. "Nice to see some Americans know what they're doing," he sneered. Then he waved her on, slapping her crudely on the buttocks as he did so.

Lorna held in the impulse to brain him with his own rifle, and instead continued to walk towards the grocery store on the corner of the street with her teeth gritted tightly, so that she couldn't yell a particularly vicious insult.  _Think of Libby,_  she thought sourly.  _She needs you. Don't be stupid..._


	2. Covering Fire

Lorna Dane felt the ground shudder as a column of Soviet tanks trundled past her apartment building, part of the ongoing "urban pacification" of her neighbourhood. She didn't understand why it was so necessary for the Red Army to keep moving so much heavy armour through here, since this was an area of New York that had clearly given up and completely accepted Soviet control years ago. Then again, she thought, she wasn't the one at the head of the command structure, so she didn't have all the necessary information to make such decisions. Of course, since Colonel Osborn had proven himself to be a sadistic brute of a commander more than once in the past, Lorna supposed it was just as likely to be him flexing his muscles for the sheer hell of it. Trying to put thoughts of him out of her mind, Lorna returned to the kitchen sink and the dishes she'd left unwashed since the previous night – hot water was at a premium these days thanks to the Soviet military, and since she'd needed a shower more than anything else, she'd decided that dirty dishes could comfortably wait their turn. Behind her, Libby played with her patchwork dolly Flossie-Bell, chattering away happily to her as she set out plastic tea-cups and poured imaginary tea for her and the three teddy bears sat a short distance away.

Lorna smiled to herself in satisfaction. Libby had been so pleased when she had received Flossie-Bell for Christmas (or what passed for it these days, anyway) one year ago, even though Lorna had had to stitch the doll together herself from various scraps of cloth and cannibalised old toys. Flossie-Bell was a raggedy mess of disproportionate parts, with train-track stitching scars running all over her body and a dress that was too small in some places and too loose in others, but Libby would not be parted from her. She even took her to bed every night and cuddled up to her as if she was the source of all the warmth in the world. It always warmed Lorna's heart to see her present, which had been such a labour of love, being so well received. And since today was her day off, she thought it was too good to let that sight go to waste... not to mention she wanted to get Libby as far away from the Russian military as possible. Central Park seemed as good a place as any, since Russian soldiers tended not to go anywhere near it unless they absolutely had to, or unless they were off-duty. "Hey, sweetie," she said as she ran a dishcloth over a couple of plates, "how would you and Flossie-Bell like to go to the park today? I don't have to go to work tonight, so we can stay out all day if you want."

Libby squealed with delight. "Yay!" she exclaimed in a flush of sudden excitement. "Can we get some cotton-candy, too?"

"I don't see why not, as long as you remember the magic word," Lorna chuckled. "We could have some pizza for lunch as well, if you want – how does that sound?"

"Yeah! Pizza!" Libby said, almost dancing with happiness. "When can we go, Mommy?"

"Well, let me just finish these dishes, and we can get going as soon as we can. Why don't you go and ask Grandma to help you put on something nice while I'm drying up, okay?" Lorna replied, brushing her wet fingertip against Libby's nose affectionately as she heard her mother returning from her morning run. "You wouldn't want to go get pizza in something boring, would you?"

Libby shook her head quickly for a moment, causing her pale green hair to end up surrounding her face like a frizzy halo, and then dashed off out of the kitchen to find her own favourite dress as she clutched Flossie-Bell tightly to her chest. Turning back to the task at hand, Lorna plunged her hands back into the bowl of warm water and scrubbed some crusted-over food off Libby's miniature cutlery before putting it all out in neat rows in order to let the water drain away from it. Once she was satisfied that it was all ready, she ran a dishcloth over them and put them away in their usual cupboard – in other words, the one that was as far out of Libby's reach as possible. Lorna knew her daughter far too well to let her inquisitive nature get the better of her in this situation, after all, and she wasn't about to risk either her daughter's well-being or the safety of her kitchen because of Libby's curiosity. When everything was put away safely, Lorna risked opening a packet of chocolate-chip cookies and taking out two for herself; she figured that it was an adequate reward for doing the housework. Pouring herself a glass of cold milk to go with them, Lorna sat at her kitchen table and savoured her short period of peace, which was broken only by Libby's excited chattering and her mother's exclamations of stunned surprise from the next room. She smiled broadly to herself and took a big bite of one of her cookies, knowing that Libby would be far too excited to make any rational judgements about what to wear right now. From past experience, Lorna knew that it would take her daughter at least half an hour to calm down, so she planned to use the breathing space as best she could... and to make sure she got a peace offering ready for her mother when Libby was finally done with her. She thought a plate of milk and cookies might be a good start...

* * *

 

Lorna held tightly onto Libby's hand as they walked towards the entrance to Central Park, feeling her daughter start to pull away from her in her excitement. When she had calmed down and decided to get ready for this day trip, Libby had chosen a knee-length green dress with white socks, which Lorna was sure would end up completely covered in grass stains. Still, it was what Libby had chosen to wear, so Lorna had had to go along with it. Passing a Red Army soldier as he and his squad marched down the street with their rifles held casually at the ready, Lorna made sure that she kept her eye contact to a minimum. With Libby around, she didn't want to provoke any needless displays of superiority, so she bent closer to her daughter and quietly ushered her past the soldiers, whispering soft words of reassurance to her frightened child. Then, what she had wanted to avoid happened – one of the soldiers turned around and focused directly on her. Libby whimpered a little as she felt her mother's fingers clench reflexively around her shoulders, and Lorna felt her daughter's tiny body start to shake as the Russian soldier towered above her. "Hello there," the soldier said, looking down kindly at Libby before reaching into his pocket for something. "Your daughter is very pretty, yes?"

"Yes," Lorna said, feeling a little confused, and more than a little apprehensive. "Yes, she is. Why do you say that?"

"I wish to give her something, as a token of friendship between our two peoples," the soldier said, producing a small bar of chocolate. "If we do this often enough, then perhaps you will begin to see us as something good." He handed the chocolate to Libby, who took it with a great deal of apprehension, as if she thought it might bite her before she got the chance to eat it. "There. It is good, yes?"

Libby nodded silently with her eyes still saucer-wide, clinging to Lorna's leg with her free hand. Lorna reached down with one hand and started to stroke her daughter's hair softly to reassure her. "It's okay, sweetie," she said softly. "Say thank you to the nice man for your present now."

"T'ank you," Libby mumbled in a voice that was almost a whisper, looking down towards the ground as she did so.

"It was my pleasure," the soldier said with a broad smile. "Remember that, little one. We are here to help you."

"That's good to hear," Lorna said shortly, fighting to keep her tone civil as her patience finally ran out – she hardly wanted to get the soldier angry, and have him hit her for disobedience right in front of her child. Quickly, she walked her daughter away from him, and his smile rapidly evened itself out into the familiar expression of stony, businesslike determination that Lorna was used to seeing every day, his gaze returning to the street as she and Libby were quickly forgotten.  _And the next time you try to indoctrinate my kid with candy, I'll fucking kill you..._  "Good girl – you were really brave," she said to Libby as her daughter held tightly to her. "You did really well. Come on, we'll go feed the ducks now – did you remember the breadcrumbs?"

"Yes, Mommy," Libby reached into a pocket with her small hand and drew out a plastic bag. "I kept them safe in my jacket. Do you think the ducks will like them?"

"Absolutely," Lorna said, smiling. "When I was little, Grandma and I used to do this every weekend, and we never had any complaints."

"But Mommy, ducks can't talk!" Libby said (quite sensibly, Lorna realised). "How do you know they liked them?"

Lorna chuckled. "Well, they kept coming back every weekend – whenever Grandma and I showed up, they'd all fly down to see us. I think that means they were pretty satisfied customers, don't you?" She pointed towards the pond that was only a short distance away from where they were standing, where a large crowd of ducks was huddling together on the water, waiting for the influx of visitors that always happened around noon. "See, look – there they are, all ready for their lunch. Why don't we go and see if they're hungry right now?" Libby shrieked with delight as soon as she saw the ducks, and skipped happily off towards the water with the plastic bag swinging from her small fingers. Lorna took hold of her free hand just to make sure that she didn't run off – with the Russian Army swarming through her neighbourhood the way they had been these past few years, there was more chance than ever of a lost child never coming home, so she was determined never to have that happen to her or to Libby. When they reached the edge of the pond, Libby dug a small hand into the bag of breadcrumbs and threw a generous handful into the water, laughing as several of the ducks began squabbling over the new supply of food. Almost automatically, Lorna drew her daughter gently back from the lip of the pond before she threw a handful of her own into the water, just to make sure that she didn't fall in. "Careful, honey," she said, disguising the worry in her voice as best she could. "The water's not very deep, but you wouldn't want your lovely dress getting wet, would you?"

"Sorry, Mommy," Libby said, in a truly apologetic tone. "Can I still feed the ducks?"

"Sure," Lorna told her with a smile. "Just don't fall in, okay? I don't want to have to come rescue you." She ruffled Libby's hair and then threw another handful of food into the water, watching the crumbs briefly speckle the surface before they were snapped up by either a hungry duck or one of the numerous goldfish that teemed throughout the pond. The breeze was warm, and brushed against Lorna's face gently, like a lover's fingers. She smiled as she felt the gentle sunshine on her cheeks, and for a fraction of a second she almost forgot that the Russians had turned New York into their own private playground. For a brief moment, it seemed like there was nothing in the world to stop her from doing exactly as she wanted to do, but, as usual, the feeling was too good to last. She turned back to the pond, and saw Libby busily trying to empty the entire bag of breadcrumbs into her hand. Quickly, she stepped forwards and plucked the bag out of Libby's fingers. "I wouldn't do that if I were you, honey," she said with a smile, as Libby looked up at her indignantly. "Your hands are way too small for that to work. Here, let's do it together, okay? Hold out your hands." She tipped a very small amount of the bag's contents into Libby's cupped palms, and then upended the bag into her right hand. Kneeling down, she sprinkled the crumbs onto the water directly in front of her, and watched, delighted, as several of the ducks began swimming towards them. Libby squeaked with excitement as they swam almost within arm's length, and eagerly added her handful to the water.

"Look, Mommy!" she said. "Look at them!"

"See what I told you about them knowing a good thing when they saw it?" Lorna chuckled. "Say – how about we go and get that cotton candy now?" She pointed towards a vendor at the intersection of two paths, and then took Libby by the hand to prevent her from running away faster than she could catch her. When she got to the cart, she got two small whirls of cotton candy on long wooden sticks and then handed the smaller of the two to Libby, keeping in mind that they would need to be eating lunch soon. It wouldn't really do for her to be full up when she needed something more substantial, so Lorna had a plan for making sure that that didn't happen. Slipping her free hand into her pocket as she and Libby sat down on a park bench to eat their absurdly sugary snacks, she drew out a red-stitched softball from her coat pocket and said "Would you like to play some catch when we're finished?"

Libby nodded quickly. "Yes please, Mommy," she said, her voice slightly muffled by the contents of her mouth.

Lorna smiled. "Great! Let's just make sure this all goes down properly before we start, though – wouldn't want you to get a tummy ache, right?" The two of them sat down on a nearby bench and cuddled together while they ate their snack. When Lorna was sure that Libby would be fine to run around a little, she stood up and said "Shall we start now, sweetie?" Libby nodded excitedly, still licking her sticky fingers, and then ran a few metres away from her mother. "Get ready!" Lorna exclaimed, and threw the ball gently towards her daughter. Libby ran to catch it, and managed to just about grasp it with one small hand. Then she threw it back as hard as she could – but Lorna still had to run forwards a little to make sure it didn't land on the ground.  _What the hell, she's only three,_  she thought with a smile.

They played catch for about half an hour, laughing whenever they missed a throw, or threw so badly that the ball ended up nowhere near its intended target. Soon, Lorna could feel her stomach growling, and could see Libby looking equally hungry, so she picked the ball up and said "Would you like to go and have that pizza now, honey?"

"Yay!" Libby exclaimed, clapping her hands and nodding vigorously. "Can we go to my favourite place, please, Mommy?"

Lorna tapped her chin with a fingertip. "Well... I don't know about that. Have you been a good girl today?" She fully intended to honour Libby's request, of course – her favourite place was a few minutes' walk away, so it was hardly too far to travel – but she thought this might make her smile a bit.

"Yes, Mommy," Libby said brightly, already knowing this routine off by heart. "I've been a very good girl."

"And have you done everything I've asked you to do?"

"Yes, Mommy," Libby said, trying hard not to grin.

"And are you really hungry?"

"Yes, Mommy!" Libby said, finally bursting into a fit of giggles.

"Well, I guess we have to go, then," Lorna replied, holding out her hand. "Come on, kiddo, let's go eat." She led Libby towards the entrance of the park and out into the street again, and saw a convoy of Russian tanks trundling across an intersection up ahead. They didn't seem to be heading towards anything important, though, judging by their speed and the disposition of the men standing behind the machine guns in their turrets, leading Lorna to automatically breathe a little sigh of relief. She felt Libby squeezing her hand a little more tightly then, so she squeezed back and said "Don't worry, sweetheart, they're not here to hurt anybody. They're just passing through, okay? They'll be gone soon." The tanks rumbled away almost as quickly as they had appeared, leaving behind nothing but oily tank-tread marks smeared all over the surface of the road, and some smoky exhaust fumes that curled away lazily on the breeze. When she was sure they were out of sight, Lorna decided to quicken her pace a little, just to make sure that she would not run into any more of them – the Russians had twice threatened to ruin her day off, so she definitely didn't want to give them an opportunity to try a third time. "Would you like me to carry you, honey? I bet that would make us get to the pizza place faster," she said, holding her arms out. Libby nodded, and so she hoisted her daughter up onto her shoulders gently, feeling the welcome weight settle onto her and hoping that this would help the journey go a little faster.

Sure enough, it was only a short while until they arrived at the door of the restaurant, and Lorna crouched down to let Libby get back on her own two feet before taking her by the hand and leading her indoors. It didn't take them very long to find a table by the window, as it was hardly full at all. Lorna lifted Libby into her seat and then sat down opposite her, picking up a menu and flipping through it. "Well, here we are," she said. "What would you like to have today?"

"Ham!" Libby cried. Lorna smiled at that; Libby was nothing if not predictable when it came to her choices of pizza toppings, rarely straying from a set number of favourites. "Ham, Mommy!"

"Okay, sweetie, I think we can do that," Lorna replied, before she pointed to Libby's dolly and said "Would Flossie-Bell like anything?"

Libby put her ear to the dolly's mouth, and said "She says she wants some pineapple."

"Ham and pineapple," Lorna said with a smile. "Got it. Anything else?"

Once again Libby put her ear to her dolly's mouth, and said "Can Flossie-Bell please have some Coke too?"

Lorna tried her hardest not to smile at that.  _Good hustle, kid,_  she thought. "Sure, that sounds good to me. Just as long as she drinks it, not you."

"Silly!" Libby said, giggling. "I wouldn't do that!"

"Well, I'll be keeping an eye on you just in case," Lorna replied. "I'm sure Flossie-Bell will be able to tell me all about it if I miss anything." She called the waitress over and said "I think we're ready to order now. I'll have the Red Star special mozzarella with extra anchovies, please."

"Okay, that's one Red Star special mozzarella, extra anchovies," the waitress said, scribbling it down into her notebook before she turned to Libby. "And for you, madam?"

"Ham," Libby said shyly. "And my dolly wants pineapple."

The waitress smiled. "One ham and pineapple. Okay, I'll see what I can do. Would either of you like anything to drink while you're waiting?"

"Just some water for me, please," Lorna said. "And my daughter's dolly will have some Coke – but not too much. She's already had some cotton candy today, so much more sugar and she won't sleep tonight."

"I see. I'll make sure I get a small glass, then," the waitress said with a knowing expression, tucking her pen and notepad back into the small apron tied around her waist. "I'll be back with those drinks as soon as I can."

The waitress left their table – and then the street outside shook with a thunderous explosion, which Lorna recognised as the impact of a rocket launcher. Quickly, she ushered Libby under their table, and then looked out of the window. The building across the street was almost crumbling in on itself thanks to the yawning, jagged-edged hole which had been torn in its side by the explosion, and pieces of brick and metal were strewn across the ground in a halo of rubble. Thick rubber-coated wires were thrashing around on the concrete sidewalk, sending out jagged blue tongues of electricity and clouds of smoke billowing from within the wounded building. To her right she could see a knot of rebels emerging from an alleyway, laden down with grenades and other explosives and laying down a curtain of suppressive fire from their pilfered weapons, but she couldn't see who they were supposed to be suppressing until she saw a small group of black-clad soldiers emerging from the smoky ruins. They were enclosed from head to foot in armoured suits, red stars gleaming on their shoulders and their faces hidden from view by dark-eyed helmets, and they carried large, brutal-looking rifles. Lorna had never seen their design before, but they were at least twice as bulky as the standard Russian assault rifle, with what looked like a grenade launcher slung under the weapon's long barrel. The presence of a second trigger guard seemed to confirm that, and Lorna felt a cold smear of terror ooze down her spine. This was not going to end well for anybody.

The lead soldier squeezed his weapon's trigger and a volcanic spray of bullets scythed across the street, liquefying at least one rebel and blowing the leg off another. The soldier behind him stopped to put a single round through the crippled rebel's forehead, presumably to prevent him from pulling the pin on the numerous grenades he had strapped to his body, and then opened fire on the fleeing rebels alongside his leader.

Lorna didn't wait to see any more. She simply crawled under the table where Libby was whimpering, and clasped her daughter tightly to her body. "It's all right, baby girl," she whispered. "Shh, now. Everything's going to be fine. We'll be all right, I promise."

She hoped that was true.


	3. Casualties Of War

Lorna Dane held her daughter close as the deafening noise from outside continued. Over the sound of her daughter whimpering quietly, she could hear the sounds of clipped commands in Russian and the sound of gurgling screams. She didn't want to look to see which side was taking a heavier beating, because she knew that her daughter needed her far more than she needed to see the outside. "Shh. It's okay, honey," she whispered into her daughter's ear, kissing it gently as Libby shook with fear and clung to her dolly with white-knuckled fingers. "It's okay – Mommy's here. I won't let anyone hurt you. Not now, not ever. I love you so much, baby; don't you ever forget that. Nobody's going to hurt you. You're safe with me. Shh." And then, just as suddenly as it had begun, the noise from outside stopped, leaving Lorna's ears ringing with the after-effects of the blasts. Telling Libby to stay where she was, Lorna risked a glance from under the table where she and Libby were hiding, just to find out what was going on. What she saw horrified her.

The street was littered with fresh bloodstains and Russian bodies, their armoured forms lying spread-eagled with messy, ragged-edged grenade wounds torn into their chests, and the bodies of almost half of the rebel squad who had attacked the building in the first place. The rebels' wounds were even more gruesome and severe than those on the soldiers' bodies, with limbs, heads and guts blown off or liquefied by the Russians' monstrously destructive new weapons. Chunks of the road had been reduced to cratered ruins, which Lorna recognised as the impact points of explosives (whether from the rebels' grenades or the Russians' rifles, she didn't know, and nor did she particularly care). The scene was one of utter devastation, even on such a small scale, and yet Lorna still had no idea why Jim Logan had had his rebels attack the building in the first place. It didn't look like a Russian military establishment, since there were no large hammer and sickle emblems anywhere to be found on the exterior, and, from what Lorna could make out through the smoking haze that obscured the building's innards, there was nothing inside that was particularly important, either. That didn't answer the question of what those armoured Russians had been doing in there, of course, but Lorna was too angry to think about that now. She was furious that Logan had made such a bizarre decision (ordering an attack on a Soviet establishment in broad daylight was hardly standard practice for him, especially when there were civilians around), and she was even more furious that he had endangered her daughter in doing so. There would be a reckoning later, she decided, but right now she had bigger things to worry about.

Looking down at her daughter, whose tear-streaked face was still buried in her bosom, she said "It's all right, sweetheart – we're safe now."

Libby looked up at her mother and promptly burst into tears again. She was clearly still totally terrified, and Lorna didn't blame her; it was hard enough for her to understand this whole situation, so it was always going to be harder on a three year-old child who had only expected to go on a day's outing for some cotton candy and pizza. Lorna didn't try to talk to her again; instead, she simply cradled Libby against her chest and sang a lullaby to her quietly until the Red Army clean-up crews arrived to take care of their own soldiers' corpses, as well as those of the rebels. One of the Red Army medics came to her side and offered her a field-issue blanket – a heavy, well-insulated thing that shut out the cold almost instantly. "Here," she said kindly as she draped it around Lorna's shoulders and eased a flask of water into her hand. "This should help, yes?" She knelt down beside her then, hesitantly reaching out to touch Libby's hair, and stroking it gently when Libby offered her no resistance. "Such a beautiful child," she whispered. "You must be proud of her for being so brave."

"Yes," Lorna said in a dry, cracked tone, her throat still feeling parched even though she had just swallowed a large mouthful of water. "Libby's my little angel."

The medic smiled. "I have two children myself," she said. "Mikhail is three, and Anastasia is five. Perhaps they will meet when they are in school together?"

Lorna looked up at the medic, surprised, and for a moment she forgot that the woman was a Russian invader, instead simply seeing another mother who was proud of her children. She gave the medic a wan, pale-lipped smile of her own. "I hope so," she said quietly. "Libby likes meeting new kids."

"I will tell my children to look out for her when she starts school, then," the medic replied, before she glanced around the makeshift triage facility that had been set up in the closed-off street outside the restaurant. "I must tend to the other wounded now, but you are free to call me back if you feel you need further treatment, or if you need me to find somebody to take you back to your apartment." She grasped Lorna's free hand then, and squeezed it gently but firmly. "I hope your little one feels better soon."

"Thank you," Lorna said softly. She gathered the blanket closer around herself and Libby, sitting still and quiet for another half an hour until her daughter stopped crying and asked softly if they could go home. "It's okay, sweetheart," Lorna said. "We can go home any time you want." She picked Libby up and carried her over to where the medic was standing. "Could you help us get home now, please?" The medic nodded and smiled, before gesturing to a couple of soldiers. They led her to a small armoured personnel carrier and drove her straight to her apartment block before helping her disembark, taking her hand to help her keep her balance as she stepped down to the ground. Lorna thanked them, and climbed the stairs with Libby in her arms. When she got to her front door, she knocked on it after letting Libby down to the ground again. Her mother came to the door almost before Lorna had had time to draw back her hand, crying out as all her obvious pent-up worry was released in a single instant.

"Oh, God, I was so worried," she whispered, reaching forwards to hug Libby and then Lorna tightly. "I didn't even know if you'd been caught up in that explosion. I hoped you weren't anywhere near it, but then when you didn't come home for so long –"

"It's okay, Mom," Lorna said, nevertheless feeling a familiar, comforting sensation of security in her mother's arms. "We're here now. The Russians cleared up the mess, and helped us home."

Her mother nodded thoughtfully. "They have their moments, don't they?"

"Yeah, sometimes they do," Lorna said, walking over to the refrigerator and reaching inside for a carton of milk. She drew the carton out and found a glass from the cupboard at her eye-level, pouring a generous measure of milk into it and handing it to Libby. "There you are, sweetheart. Drink that – it'll make you feel better." Libby took the milk and began taking small sips from it without saying anything, and Lorna felt a painful stab of worry. Libby's silence was the thing that concerned Lorna the most, especially considering her usual level of volume. She knelt in front of her daughter and said "You know you can talk to me about anything, don't you, honey?" Libby still didn't reply, instead glumly dropping her eyes back to her glass of milk. "Don't be scared, honey," Lorna said encouragingly. "You can say whatever you want to. I promise I'll listen, cross my heart." She marked two diagonal lines over the centre of her chest with her fingertips, and it was then when Libby finally spoke.

In a tiny, frail voice she said "Why did they try to hurt me, Mommy?"

Lorna bit her lip and felt tears beginning to flood down her face. "Oh, Libby, they didn't come for you," she said, kissing Libby tenderly on the forehead. "You're the most wonderful little girl in the whole world. Nobody wants to hurt you, I promise."

"But why did they come today?" Libby asked persistently. "What did I do?"

Lorna sighed, stroking Libby's delicate green curls. "You didn't do anything wrong, honey. There are just people in the world who can't get along, and sometimes they do really mean stuff to each other – but there are people out there who want to help other people as well. Do you remember the nice lady who gave us that blanket today? She thought you were beautiful, didn't she?" Libby nodded, her expression softening a little. Heartened at the improvement, however slight it was, Lorna continued "And do you remember the nice man who gave you the chocolate bar today as well? He thought you were beautiful too." The crushing irony that both of those people had been Russians, while the people who had destroyed her daughter's good mood had been Americans, didn't escape Lorna's notice. She mentally bookmarked it as another thing she would take Jim Logan to task over the next time she saw him. "We were just in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Libby frowned. "Why don't those people like each other, Mommy?"

"Well," Lorna began, sitting her daughter down onto the couch in front of the television and wondering just how she was going to condense the history of the Soviet conquest down into sentences a small child could understand, "you know how you see those soldiers on the streets all the time? Well, a long time ago, before you were born, the soldiers came across the sea and they said to us that they were going to be in charge. Lots of people didn't like that, so they decided they were going to fight the soldiers to make them go away."

"Is that why they came today?" Libby asked.

"Yes," Lorna said. "Sometimes they do things like that because they want to make the soldiers remember who they are, and they forget about anybody who gets in the way."

"Oh," Libby said softly, still sounding like she didn't completely understand. "Does that happen often?"

"No, it doesn't happen very often," Lorna lied. "But I tell you what: I know somebody who can tell you a lot more about this than I can. Maybe I'll be able to get him to say sorry for what he did today, too." She doubted that very much, of course – but she'd be damned if she didn't at least try, for Libby's sake...

* * *

 

The next day, Libby woke Lorna up early, stirring from her slumber at around six-thirty and immediately huddling closer to her mother thanks to the early-morning chill. She had asked if she could sleep in her mother's bed the night before, just so she could feel a little safer, and Lorna had of course agreed without hesitation. She had spent half an hour helping her daughter to put on her night clothes and brush her teeth before reading her a story and turning off her bedside lamp. The last thing she remembered from the night before, in fact, was drifting off to sleep with Libby curled up in her arms. Libby had woken up a few times during the night, crying out and thrashing wildly thanks to some particularly vivid bad dreams, causing the duvet to fly off the bed and crumple onto the floor in a jumbled heap. Lorna hadn't been even the slightest bit angry with her, even after the fifth or sixth time it happened. Instead, she had simply sung Libby a lullaby in a soft voice until she nodded off again, cuddling her tightly so that she could feel secure. It had left her exhausted, of course, but she knew it had been necessary. She couldn't let Libby down – not when she needed her the most.

"Hey, princess," she said, smiling with bleary eyes at her daughter. "Are you ready for some breakfast yet?"

Libby squeaked with excitement and threw off the duvet with an enthusiasm Lorna couldn't remember ever having had herself. The shock of the cold air hitting her skin jolted her fully awake, her skin prickling into gooseflesh and the hair on the back of her neck standing on end. She swung her legs out of bed and crossed the room to where her hand-me-down shower robe was hanging on the hook screwed to the inside of her door, and shrugged herself into it with a single practiced movement. Then she put on her slippers and followed Libby out to the kitchen, rubbing at her eyes a little as she found Libby a bowl and a spoon, and opened a fresh box of Libby's favourite cereal. She didn't like that that particular cereal happened to be both expensive and coated in sugar, of course, but it made Libby happy, so she supposed she had to let her have this one luxury. Considering all of the scrimping and saving their family had to do on a daily basis, it seemed only fair.

Pouring herself a bowl of oatmeal and drenching it in milk, Lorna sat down next to Libby and said "How are you feeling this morning? We had a pretty bad night, didn't we?"

Libby looked thoughtful for a moment, then said "I'm okay, Mommy." She paused. "I liked you hugging me last night. It made the bad dreams go away. They were nasty."

Lorna smiled, even though she was sure that Libby would be having more bad dreams sooner rather later. It was practically unavoidable. "Good. I'm glad I could help, honey. If you want to sleep with me again tonight, just say so – I'll be working until pretty late, but if you'd like me to stay with you, you just get into my bed and we'll meet in the middle, okay?" She touched Libby affectionately on the nose with a fingertip. "I'll try not to disturb you – but you have to promise not to bother Grandma, or I'll carry you back to your own bed myself. Do you promise?"

"Yes, Mommy," Libby said solemnly, her expression looking almost impossibly earnest and sincere. Lorna smiled again, and ruffled Libby's pastel green hair with one hand.

"Good girl," she said. "Now we should both finish our breakfast, or we'll both be hungry for the rest of the day."

As if on cue, Libby wolfed down the remainder of her cereal, and when Lorna had finished her own bowl, she skipped into the bathroom and waited for her mother to spread a small amount of toothpaste onto her miniature toothbrush. As Lorna brushed her own teeth, Libby tried studiously to keep up, with Lorna giving her occasional guidance and pointers until it was time to rinse away the lingering food with a small amount of mouthwash. She sipped from the bottle cap that Lorna had used to measure out a suitable amount of the mint-flavoured liquid, and then copied Lorna as her mother swilled the mouthwash around her mouth and then spat it out into the basin. Lorna wiped her daughter's chin with a towel and congratulated her enthusiastically. "Well done – you'll be able to do that without me soon," she said. "Maybe you can try it again tonight – but make sure Grandma is there to watch you. I don't want you to eat your toothbrush while I'm away!"

Libby giggled. It was heartening for Lorna to hear her making such a sound after the horrors of the day before, but she wasn't going to think of Libby as being totally out of the woods yet. She knelt down and picked Libby up, carrying her over to the couch in front of the television so that they could watch her favourite cartoon together. Lorna didn't exactly like the fact that  _Ursa_ _Major_  featured all kinds of subtle pro-Soviet messages, but fortunately Libby was still far too young for any of them to register – so to her it was just a cartoon show about Vladimir the friendly brown bear and his various animal friends. Lorna flicked the television on just in time for the show's theme tune to start, so she joined in with her daughter as Libby started to sing the theme tune at the top of her voice.

When the show had finished, Lorna shifted Libby off her lap so that she could knock on her mother's bedroom door. "Mom?" she asked hesitantly. "Are you awake in there?"

"Yes, honey, I'm awake," came a muffled reply. "I'll be out in just a second; I just need to make my hair look a little tidier, that's all."

"Good," Lorna said. "Look, I'm going to be going to work soon, so could you watch Libby for me?"

"Sure, Lorna," her mother said, before she opened the door and smiled at her daughter. "You go ahead and get to work. I'm sure Libby and I can have some fun together – can't we, sweet-pea?"

Libby smiled broadly. "Yes, Grandma."

"That's my girl," her grandmother said, before she beckoned Lorna into her bedroom and lowered her voice so that Libby couldn't hear. "What do you want me to do with her today? I'm worried she might get scared out in the open."

"Then take her somewhere else," Lorna said bluntly. "She likes museums. Take her to one of those, and hope that Jim Logan and his asshole buddies don't decide to bomb that as well."

"All right," her mother replied, before she hugged Lorna tightly. "I'll do my best to keep her safe. Have a good day."

"Thanks, Mom." Lorna disengaged herself from her mother and picked up her leather jacket from its hook on the inside of the front door. Then she filled her kit-bag with the essentials she would need throughout the day – deodorant, some make-up, spare underwear and clothing, and so on. "I'll see you later." She shrugged herself into her jacket and then picked Libby up, kissing her on the cheek and hugging her tightly. "I love you, Liberty Dane – don't you ever forget that."

"I won't, Mommy," Libby said quietly, suddenly looking downcast. "I wish you didn't have to go."

"Oh, I know, sweetheart, I know," Lorna said, once more feeling tears at the edges of her eyes, "but I have to. I'm so sorry." She put Libby down, dabbed at her tears with her handkerchief and then touched her daughter on the nose with a fingertip. "Be good for Grandma."

"Okay, Mommy," Libby murmured. "I love you."

"I love you too, honey," Lorna replied, before she took Libby by the hand and led her over to the door, so that she could keep hold of her for as long as possible before she had to leave. When the door shut behind her, Lorna leaned against the wall outside her apartment and sobbed quietly for a moment or so before she took a deep breath, wiped at her eyes and nose, and made her way down the creaking staircase to where her bike was parked. Slipping a piece of the front wheel out of a small bag in her jacket's left pocket, she re-affixed it to the bike's chassis with a small wrench she kept in her other pocket. She'd learned the hard way that partially dismantling her methods of transport was the only way to keep them from getting stolen, especially in this neighbourhood.

Kicking the bike to life, its engine growling in protest, she accelerated through the dirty, garbage-strewn streets as fast as the bike could manage, avoiding Soviet patrols as best she could. Since they were so frequent at all other times of the day, Lorna had found that mornings were generally the best times to get wherever she needed to go. A few five-man squads armed with little more than rifles and a couple of grenades each were much more preferable than a battalion's worth of troopers with tanks support, after all. Thanks to the sparse traffic, it didn't take her too long to get to her workplace. The gaudy neon signs advertising her dancing had already been lit, spewing bright pink and green light out in all directions. From what Lorna understood, Soviet law technically prevented bars from offering nude dancing before a certain hour, but this was generally overlooked in many areas because of the obvious morale boosts it gave the Russian troops. Her spots on stage weren't until much later, though, so for the majority of the day she would either be serving drinks or sexually indulging Russian soldiers. She didn't particularly enjoy the latter part of her job, but it was something that she endured for Libby's sake. The additional benefit of extracting information for the resistance had been a bonus in the past – but after Jim Logan's mistake the day before, Lorna wasn't exactly in the mood to keep helping him out.

She saw her boss cleaning glasses behind the bar and said "Morning, Frank."

Frank looked up. "Hey, Lorna. Nice day off?"

"Not really," Lorna replied. "You see that explosion on the news yesterday? My daughter and I were right next to it."

"Damn, Lorna," Frank said, his expression clouding over with concern. "You get hurt? How's Libby?"

"No, I'm not hurt, but Libby was fucking terrified," Lorna said flatly. "She'll be having nightmares for weeks."

"Then I think you should go home," Frank told her. "I think your daughter needs you more than I do."

"I can't," Lorna said. "She's with her grandmother, and... I know Jim Logan will be showing up here sooner or later. I want to tell that ragged little bastard exactly what I think of him. Maybe then I'll go home." She paused. "I really need to do this, Frank – Logan needs to know what he did to my little girl. If I don't I'll feel even worse than I do now."

"Okay," Frank said, still looking uneasy about her decision. "Okay. If I see him I'll send him to you. I'll cancel those sessions with Russkies I had you pencilled in for, too. Judy can cover those."

"Thanks, Frank," Lorna said, leaning over the bar and kissing him on the cheek. "That means a lot."

* * *

 

Lorna threw her head back so that her green hair whipped around her face as she finished her afternoon dance, the whoops of the crowd ringing in her ears as she let her body relax. She took a bow and then retreated off the stage as she always did, leaving a satisfied audience behind her. As she moved towards her dressing room, Frank caught up with her and grabbed her by the shoulder. "Better be ready, kid," he said in a low tone. "Logan's in there." Lorna felt something cold slide into her hand, and she looked down, to see a Soviet army pistol clasped in her fingers. "Just in case you want to make your point a bit more strongly," Frank continued.

"Thanks again, Frank," Lorna said. "I owe you one."

"Don't mention it," he replied. "I never liked the runt either."

Lorna smiled, and then turned towards her dressing room door. Pushing the door open, she entered the room with the pistol in both hands, and found Jim Logan sitting in his usual chair with his usual long-necked bottle of beer in one hand and a cigar in the other. His jovial expression changed in an instant when he saw the gun in Lorna's hands. "Put your hands up, you fucking bastard, and stand up," Lorna snarled, the pent-up rage she had been keeping under control since the day before finally emerging. Immediately, Jim raised his hands and stepped away from the desk.

"Darlin', I –" he began, before Lorna darted forwards and cracked him across the face with the butt of the pistol, sending him staggering back as he clutched at his momentarily-bruised cheek.

"Shut the fuck up," she snapped. "You talk when I'm finished and not before, understand?" She fixed him with her icy glare, and said "You sent those people to blow up that building yesterday, didn't you?"

"Yeah, but I had my reasons –" Jim said, before he received another punishing blow across the face.

"Shut up!" Lorna cried, furiously. "Why couldn't you have waited until there weren't so many people around? You nearly killed my daughter because you were so fucking stupid!"

"What?" Jim said, confused. "You don't live anywhere near there."

"I had a day off," Lorna said, her tone as cold as ice. "I was taking Libby to the park – we were just about to have lunch when your bunch of heroes decided to give that building a new doorway." She stepped closer to Jim and put her pistol right against his skull. "We were this close to getting turned into mincemeat, you fucking idiot. Couldn't you have waited? No, I guess you couldn't – can't let Jim Logan go without getting his moment of glory, right?" She snorted scornfully. "I felt safer when the Russkies came to clear up your mess than I do with you, Jim – at least they gave two shits about the people they were supposed to be saving. Libby's going to be having nightmares for weeks thanks to you."

"Look, kid, I'm sorry –" Jim said, before Lorna shook her head.

"Not good enough," she snapped. "You better tell my daughter that, right to her face. Tell her why you ruined her day out and scared the fuck out of her, just to make yourself feel like the Lone fucking Ranger."

"Just let me explain," Jim said, taking a step backwards. "You saw those guys in the black suits of armour, right?"

"Yeah," Lorna said. "So the Russkies have new weapons. Big deal – they get them all the time. Still doesn't explain why you couldn't have dealt with them at night."

"Okay, okay – I know it was a bad choice, but it was my only option. I had to do something fast," Jim replied. "You remember Tony Stark?"

"I remember him," Lorna said. "What's he got to do with this?"

"When Kitty & Jamie were bringin' him back from San Francisco he was goin' to bring back this new weapon with him – his 'Iron Man' suit, he called it. Then he switched sides because Kitty told him he'd have to leave the thing behind. From what Kitty tells me, seems like the Ivans were pretty sold on the idea of makin' more."

"So why the explosion?" Lorna demanded, her finger tightening on the pistol's trigger. "Get to the point, Jim."

"The point is, those guys were wearing the same kind of armour, only smaller. The Ivans have almost every scientist in the United States working for them right now, whether they want to or not. Everything in that first suit's been shrunk down so that a man can wear it. The only thing we can do now is take them out before they perfect the design and use it somewhere else."

"Like where?" Lorna said, not quite believing what she was hearing. "They own the whole damn world, Jim. From what I hear, we're the only country that hasn't just rolled over and given up completely."

"I got contacts all over the place, Lorna," Jim said. "It ain't just us that's tryin' to get rid of the Reds. I've been keepin' in touch with my buddy Victor up in Canada for years now, and he's doin' exactly what we are down here – him and a whole bunch of other Canucks all over the country. There's a whole bunch of Limeys kickin' the Russkies' asses in London. The French are busy trashin' Red Army bases in Paris. Any country you can think of has people who don't want the Ivans there – the only reason you ain't heard about it is because the Russkies don't want you to. You see why I needed to junk those things before they got shipped out? People need me to help them, an' I can't let them down." He paused, sighing, and rubbed at his eyes. "Look, Lorna, I'm sorry about your kid – she's a sweet little thing, an' I hate that I upset her – but I didn't have any choice. If you want me to apologise to her face, I'll do it the next time I see her."

"Good," Lorna said, finally lowering her gun. "She'll appreciate that."

"I hope so, kid –" Jim said, the ghost of a smile appearing on his hairy face.

"But," Lorna said, holding up a finger as she cut him off again, "I want you to swear to me that you will never put her or anybody else in that kind of danger ever again. Ever. Swear it to me, Jim, or I'll never speak to you again."

"All right, darlin'. I swear," Jim said, before he pointed to the door. "Guess I'd better go."

"Yeah," Lorna said. "Guess you better had."

When he had gone, Lorna ran her hands over her face and let out a long sigh. The anger she felt at Jim Logan was still there, below the surface, but she knew that he was a man of his word. She knew that he was doing what he was doing because he thought it was right.

Didn't make it any easier to stomach, though...


	4. Multiple Fractures

Lorna Dane lay naked on a heart-shaped bed with perfumed pink satin sheets, her back supported by a similarly-shaped headboard, one leg crooked up at the knee. As she watched the drunken Russian soldier clumsily divesting himself of his uniform on the other side of the room, she wondered just how long she'd have to endure him clawing at her body with his alcohol-drenched hands. Judging by how dishevelled and unsteady the soldier looked, she guessed she'd probably have to put up with no more than five minutes of him trying to have his way with her. That was good, she supposed, because it meant she'd have to spend less time almost choking on the smell of the exhaust-fume breath that an excess of Siberian vodka seemed to promote, but it was also unfortunate because she might also have to watch him fall into a drooling, noisy slumber before she got to anything useful. She really didn't want that to happen; after what Jim Logan had told her about the armoured suits the Russian soldiers had been wearing, she wanted to get some definitive answers about them – and not just for Jim, but for herself as well. Her daughter deserved that much, so Lorna was determined to find out something. And if push came to shove, of course, the loaded pistol Frank had placed under her pillow would drag answers out of the soldier faster than any honey-coated words she used... but for now, Lorna thought she would give the drunkard a chance to co-operate without the threat of bleeding to death. She didn't really want to kill anybody just to get to some information, after all, so when the naked soldier stumbled over to where she was lying, she simply endured.

As she'd predicted, though, the soldier's efforts did not last very long. He rolled off her with a grunt and lay beside her, panting. In between drawing in lungfuls of air, he started thanking her in Russian, the words coming through his lips slurred and fluid.

"You're welcome," she replied, using the same dialect. "Now... since I just did something for you, could you tell me something in return?"

"What... what do you want to know?" the soldier said, belching loudly mid-way through his sentence.

"Well..." Lorna began, "I saw some new suits of armour your military was using to wipe out those rebels, and I just wondered where they came from. Can you tell me anything about that?"

"Secret military project," the soldier said darkly, his unfocused eyes drawn back to her breasts again. "Comrade Osborn says it will make the Red Army into conquerors again." One of his hands closed clumsily on her chest, and so she moved away, just out of his reach.

"Sorry, soldier," Lorna said, wagging her finger reproachfully. "Maybe you'll get another ride when you've told me everything you know, but not before." Reaching back underneath her pillow, she moved the pistol into a better spot from which to grab it – just in case this all headed south really quickly – and then readjusted her posture so that she was sitting bolt upright. "So what else do you know?"

The soldier frowned, and Lorna could almost see the cogs turning slowly in his head as he tried to dredge up some information. "They can stop bullets at point-blank range – I have seen them do it! I do not know where they are made, but they are not being mass-produced yet. I think the Red Army is waiting to see how well a few suits do before they make any more."

"Do you know where they're being stored?" Lorna pressed. The soldier shook his head.

"No," he said simply. "I do not have clearance to know that. Only senior officers know where we keep them."

"Is that all you know?" Lorna asked. "I mean, surely a big-shot soldier like you must have access to more than that?"

"I am not a big-shot soldier," the man replied, "and I would like to stop this talking now." He reached over and tried to touch her breast again, but once more Lorna moved just out of his reach.

"I already told you, you don't get another ride until you tell me everything you know," she said. "You scratch my back, sweetheart, and I'll let you do anything you like..."

* * *

Lorna sat silently on the bed after the soldier had clumsily put his clothes back on and stumbled out of her room, unable to believe what he had just told her. The suits were in the early stages of development, so the ones she had seen were actually the only ones in existence at this point – but when more had been constructed, the Russian High Command intended to use them as surgical commando units that would be shipped out to every country under Soviet control. Every rebel stronghold that the Red Army had any sort of information about would then be obliterated by just a few men, who would all be impervious to anything less than the most powerful explosives. Lorna understood now why Logan had ordered his men to use the rocket launcher and all those grenades, and why he had had to move when he did; with those suits on the verge of mass-production, he and the rebel movement as a whole were running out of time. Lorna couldn't imagine what kind of bloodbath would occur when those commandos were used in their intended role for the first time – but she could well imagine what the Red Army would do afterwards. Any survivors would be rounded up, put in cattle trucks and sent to Alaska to be worked into an early grave – if they didn't first freeze to death or get shot by their captors, naturally. That, of course, would follow televised show trials designed to make the Soviet soldiers look like liberating heroes, and Lorna felt a shudder of disgust as she pictured Colonel Osborn taking centre stage, flashing his viper-grin whenever he could. She knew that she didn't want her daughter to see those trials and end up thinking that the Russians were completely in the right – Libby had seen enough of that already, and one of these days she would start believing it, too, if she wasn't steered firmly away from it. There was one way that that could be averted, so she reached into the drawer beside the bed, drew out her cell phone, and then thumbed through its list of numbers before she pushed "redial". When the other end of the line was picked up, she simply said "It's Lorna. We need to talk. Meet me at the bar in half an hour," and then hung up without waiting for a response. Then she put the phone back in its drawer and cleaned herself up as best she could, showering the last traces of the soldier's drunken stench off her skin and spraying herself with the best scent she could afford. She combed her hair and dressed herself, took a deep breath, and then walked out of the room into the slightly colder air of the corridor. She felt her body tense up a little as she did so, but it seemed to relax as she approached the public area of the bar, its noise and somewhat claustrophobic atmosphere feeling almost reassuring. She walked out into the sweaty throng and stepped up to the bar, holding her hand up to attract her boss's attention.

"Hey, Frank," she said when he finally noticed her waiting. "I'm all finished. I'll need a table somewhere in a corner, though – I have to talk to someone without any interruptions. And get me a double-vodka while I'm waiting for my guest, huh?"

Frank smiled. "Coming right up." He noticed a slight tremor of unease still lingering about her as he handed over her drink and said "You learnt something bad, didn't you? You want to talk to me about it?"

Lorna smiled haggardly. "Thanks, Frank, but I can't. The fewer people know I know something, the better – for me, for my mom, and for Libby."

"Okay," Frank replied, raising his eyebrows a little. "I see your point." He reached over the bar and took hold her Lorna's hand reassuringly. "Anything to help that little girl of yours – I know how much she means to you."

"No you don't, Frank," Lorna said quietly as she sipped from her glass. "No offence, but you have no idea how much Libby means to me."

"I guess I don't," Frank said, before he pointed to a corner booth, which was being vacated by two Russian soldiers. "I think your seats are ready. I'll make sure you're not disturbed."

"Thanks, Frank," Lorna said again, and she finished her drink in one swallow, grimacing as the Siberian alcohol seared the back of her throat. Then she started to move through the bar towards the empty booth, slipping between the knots of drunken patrons and sliding into one of the worn leather seats so that she could wait for her contact to show up. Picking absently at the table's flaking varnish and chipped edges, Lorna wondered just how old the decorations in this place really were, and whether or not they had been here since before the time the Soviets first invaded. She knew the building itself was pretty old, but she wasn't so sure about its innards – knowing Frank, though, he'd probably salvaged them from somewhere else and installed them here for an authentic "vintage" kind of atmosphere. Whatever the case, the place was never clean, no matter how much Frank tried. Crusted grime clung to the ceiling and the floor like fungus, but nobody seemed to care, as long as they got their booze. Lorna hadn't ever given it much thought either, since it was her paycheque that would suffer if there was a massive renovation of the place.

"Hey, kid," said a voice, causing Lorna to look up and leave her private reflection behind. "Penny for your thoughts?" She glanced up and saw Jim Logan's sidekicks Jamie Madrox and Kitty Pryde sitting opposite her. Inwardly she rolled her eyes, but she wasn't all that taken aback. At this point it was probably wiser for Jim to send out less well-known members of the rebel movement to find out information, rather than show up for it himself. That still didn't make this any easier to do, though; she liked Jamie Madrox, but he had never struck her as being all that good at subtlety, or at retaining important information. As for Kitty... Lorna didn't know enough about her yet to make any sort of concrete judgement. First impressions, though, had been quite favourable – even if Kitty seemed a little too hard around the edges for someone so young, Lorna thought she was a decent enough person. Any more detailed analysis would have to wait for now.

"Hi, Jamie," Lorna said simply. "Jim not coming today?"

"He had to wash his hair," Madrox replied, with a characteristic grin. "You know Jim, always so concerned with his looks."

"He thought he'd be taking too much of a risk coming here right now," Kitty said, confirming Lorna's suspicions, "so we're here instead. He said you had something to tell us?"

"Yeah," Lorna replied simply. "He told me all about why he sent those guys to blow up that building in broad daylight – you were after those armoured suits, right? My daughter and I were caught right next to that, and we were lucky not to be killed, so I had a little...  _chat_... with Jim about it."

"Jim told us about that," Kitty said, laughing. "He said he'd never been pistol-whipped so hard before in his life."

"I'm glad I made a good impression," Lorna replied with a wry smile. "He told me enough to get me interested in finding out more, so I talked to one of my paying customers about them. That's why you're here."

"What did you find out?" Kitty asked, her smile disappearing in an instant.

"You need to destroy those things, and you need to destroy them quickly," Lorna said. "The Soviet High Command is planning to mass-produce them for extermination squads. Every rebel stronghold is going to get wiped out when they're finished building them – and not just here, but everywhere else the Red Army is dealing with rebellion: Canada, England, France, wherever the hell they want. Every last one of you is dead unless you make a move soon. If you're not killed when they attack, you're damn sure going to get televised show trials and a one-way ticket to a firing squad – or a gulag in Alaska, if you're lucky. Either way, you're running out of time."

Kitty rubbed her hands down her face. "Oh God," she said hoarsely, before she composed herself, clenched her fists and rested them on the table again. "Did your friend tell you anything about where those prototypes are being stored right now?"

"No, he had no idea about that," Lorna replied, "but he did tell me that they're scheduled to perform live-fire field manoeuvres in Central Park in the next few days."

"Live-fire manoeuvres? You mean they'll be using live ammunition in Central fucking Park?" Kitty asked, incredulous. "What the fuck are they thinking?"

"Apparently High Command thinks it'll teach them to pick their targets more carefully if there are civilians around," Lorna said, shrugging. "If they shoot someone or something they aren't supposed to shoot, then they get shipped to Siberia – without trial."

"Damn," Madrox said, looking as stunned as Kitty. "I guess that's one way to make sure they shoot straight, right?"

"When are these drills supposed to happen?" Kitty asked, ignoring Madrox completely. "I don't want to have to hang around there all day, after all."

"They'll start around nine AM and carry on until eight in the evening," Lorna replied. "You can follow them back to their base then."

"Thanks, Lorna," Kitty said. "We'd better get that back to the old man as quickly as possible." She and Madrox got up out of their seats, but not before Kitty handed over a fistful of battered, crumpled one-hundred rouble notes. "Here – Jim said we should give this to you, for your trouble."

"Kitty, I can't –" Lorna began, stunned, before Kitty quickly cut her off.

"Just take it," she said with a kind smile, pressing the money firmly into Lorna's right hand and folding her fingers over it tightly. "Like I said, Jim told us to give this to you. If you don't want to think of it as something for you, think of it as something for Libby."

Lorna raised her eyebrows briefly. "Okay, Kitty, you win." She folded up the notes as best she could and put them in a pocket of her jeans. "Libby could do with some new clothes anyway. I might take her shopping tomorrow, if I get the chance."

"That's more like it," Kitty said, her smile widening. "I hope she likes them."

"So do I. She's very picky when it comes to clothes," Lorna chuckled. "I think she gets that from her grandma."

"Naturally," Madrox said with a wink. "Come on, Kit, Logan's gonna be waiting for us. Don't want to be late." He touched two fingers to his brow in a mock salute. "Catch you later, kid." Then he and Kitty left the booth, threaded their way through the crowded bar past some Russian soldiers and then left through the front door, a brief draft of cold air blowing into the bar as the door swung shut behind them. Briefly, Lorna wondered where the money they had given her had come from, and then she decided she didn't really want to know. Better to get rid of it as soon as possible, she decided, than to have it hanging around waiting to be reclaimed. If that meant buying something nice for Libby, then it was a doubly good plan, she thought. Libby hadn't had much for her last birthday, after all, so Lorna felt she deserved a treat. Some new shoes might be just the ticket, but first she had to get home. She walked back to the bar and ordered herself a small glass of water, which she gulped down in one swallow.

"I take it the meeting went well?" Frank asked, redundantly.

"Yeah – as well as those things go, anyway," Lorna said, before she put her glass down on the bar's surface and said "Look, Frank, I need to get home to my daughter and my mom. Do you think I could take off early today?"

Frank frowned. "Any particular reason?"

"I need to surprise Libby with something, and I don't think it can wait until tomorrow morning," Lorna explained. "So can I go? I promise I'll make the time up tomorrow."

"You've already done more than enough today, from the sounds of things," Frank said, before he made a face that showed he was admitting defeat, "so I guess you can leave early. Go and surprise your little girl."

"Thanks, Frank," Lorna said, leaning over the bar and kissing him on the cheek. "If you were single I'd marry you."

"If I was single we'd be married already," Frank said, smiling. "Now go on, get out of here before I change my mind..."

* * *

Lorna arrived home to find her mother and daughter sitting on the couch watching cartoons. "Hey, you," she said, and bent down as Libby ran to her excitedly.

"Mommy!" Libby cried, throwing herself into Lorna's arms and clutching tightly to her.

"Easy, now, honey," Lorna said, gently loosening Libby's grip on her. "You'll squeeze all the air out of me, and where would we be then?" She picked her daughter up and then sat down next to her mother on the couch. "Have you been a good girl for Grandma?"

"She's been a little angel," her mother said. "Why are you home so early? It's not your day off again, is it?"

"Frank gave me the afternoon off," Lorna explained simply. "Kitty and Jamie showed up at the bar to get some information I had for them –"

"Which you got by sleeping with a Russian soldier, I presume," her mother interrupted, worry streaking through her voice. "One of these days, something bad will happen –"

"But it didn't this time," Lorna said, cutting her mother off in her turn. "He was a paying customer with a head full of vodka and without any weapons, and there was a gun under my pillow, so he was in more danger than I was. Anyway, I gave Kitty and Jamie what I'd learned, and they gave me this." She reached into her pocket and drew out the bundle of money. Her mother's jaw almost hit the ground when she saw it.

"Oh my God. There's over a thousand roubles here," she said. "You know that's probably stolen, don't you?"

"Yes," Lorna replied. "It most likely is stolen, which is why I'm going to get rid of it as quickly as I can."

"Mommy!" Libby squealed again, her eyes gone wide as saucers. "Is that money?"

"Yes, sweetheart, it's money," Lorna told her. "Some friends of mine gave it to me today because I helped them out. Do you want to help me spend it?"

"Yes, please!" Libby cried. "Oh, yes please!"

"I thought you'd like that idea," Lorna replied with a smile. "I thought we could go shopping together - perhaps you'd like to get some new shoes?"

"Yay!" Libby cried. "Can I get a new dress too?"

Lorna pretended to look thoughtful, even though she knew the request was entirely reasonable, considering just how much money she had to spare. "Well, I don't know... I guess we'll have to see how much your shoes cost, and then we'll see what else we can buy."

"Can I get a new dolly?" Libby asked hopefully.

"Why would you want a new dolly?" Lorna asked, suddenly curious. "I thought you only needed Flossie-Bell?"

"Flossie-Bell is lonely," Libby said. "She told me so yesterday."

 _I'll just bet she did,_  Lorna thought. Aloud, she said "Well, I don't know. Maybe Flossie-Bell will get a new friend when it's your birthday."

"But she's lonely  _now!_ " Libby exclaimed, pouting sulkily. "You shouldn't make her wait so long!"

"You're never going to win this one, darling," her mother told her in a thoughtful tone.

"Thanks a bunch for that insight, Mom," Lorna said, rubbing her forehead. "Okay, honey, I'll see what I can do when we've got you that new dress and some new shoes." She knew that she would probably end up buying Libby a new dolly because of the sheer amount of money she had been given, but she wanted to preserve at least a small element of doubt. She kissed Libby on the nose then and continued "This will be the best shopping trip you've ever been on, I promise. Now let's go get you changed..."


	5. Diversionary Tactics

"Mommy, look!"

Libby tugged on her mothers sleeve as she saw a window display full of toys, most of which were plush replicas of characters from the cartoon  _Ursa Major_. Lorna rolled her eyes and followed her daughter over to the window. Libby pressed her face against the glass eagerly, leaving momentary smears of condensation where her nose had touched it, and stopped in front of a teddy bear of Vladimir, the title character of the cartoon. She turned and looked up at Lorna hopefully, her big green eyes wide. "Can I have him, please, Mommy? Please?"

"Well... I'm not sure," Lorna said, putting a hand on her chin thoughtfully. "I think we should go and find you a nice t-shirt or a new dress first. We can come back and buy you a Vladimir later, okay?"

"But I want Vladimir  _now_!" Libby said, stamping her foot and pushing her bottom lip out indignantly. Lorna sighed.

"I know you do, honey," she began, hoping against hope that Libby would give up before she did, "but you need new clothes more than you need a new teddy bear. I promise you'll get your Vladimir, but right now I want you to be a good girl for me." Libby opened her mouth to protest, but Lorna cut her off quickly, adding "If you help me find you a new dress, I'll buy you some ice-cream for helping me out." Bribery was something to which she didn't like to resort, but it seemed like the best way to get Libby to behave herself at this point. "And I'll even get you a Sergei as well. How does that sound?"

Libby's eyes lit up, all her anger vanishing in an instant. "You promise?" she asked, wiping at her tear-streaked cheeks with one small hand. Lorna knelt down and finished the job with her handkerchief, cleaning Libby's wet cheeks quickly and efficiently and making sure that she looked as tidy as a three-year-old could look. As she did so, she breathed a silent sigh of relief. Winning an argument with Libby was something she didn't get to do very often, so occasions like this were ones she had learnt to savour. Mentioning a possible purchase of Sergei - Libby's second favourite character from the cartoon, a wolf who was best friends with Vladimir the bear - was almost certainly the factor that had altered the balance to her advantage, but the possibility of ice-cream couldn't have hurt either. Lorna nodded gently to her daughter when she had finished gently smoothing out Libby's wayward curls, pushing them back out of her face so that they did not fall in front of her bright green eyes, and then marked a cross over her chest with a fingertip.

"I promise. Cross my heart," she said, and kissed Libby on the forehead. "Now let's see if we can find you that dress." She took Libby by the hand and led her into the department store, towards the section of the store where the girls' clothing was displayed. Many of the items were marked up at far above Lorna's usual price range - because however much the Soviet government insisted class divides were a thing of the past, there still existed a clear gap between different groups of people - but thanks to the thick wad of notes in her pocket, they were just as accessible as anything else, for which she was grateful. In fact, it was probably the only thing Jim Logan had done for her recently for which she had any real reason to be grateful: she still hadn't forgiven him completely for scaring Libby so badly, after all. Suppressing a sigh, she walked over to where the dresses were hanging and gestured at them with her free hand. "Which would you like, sweetheart? You can have whichever one you want today."

Libby looked at the rows of dresses thoughtfully for a second, and then abruptly squealed with delight. Pulling free of her mother's hand, she ran over to a line of brightly coloured, short-sleeved blue dresses, their hemlines decorated with a single red line. Lorna thought they looked a little plain, but Libby was clearly enchanted, and pointed at them excitedly. "Look at those!" she squeaked, her excitement almost getting the better of her. "They're so pretty! Can I have one of those, please, Mommy?"

Lorna smiled, ruffling Libby's hair gently. "Sure, honey. Let me just find one in your size, and we can go pay for it." She flipped through the line of dresses as they hung on the rack, looking for one which was as close to Libby's measurements as she could find. When she had picked one out, she lifted it from the rack, took Libby by the hand again, and walked over to the nearest till, joining the small queue and readying a small handful of notes. When she had paid for the dress and had it folded and put into a bag for her, she took Libby by the hand and led her back to where the plush toys were on display, knowing that Libby would start crowing for them sooner rather than later if she didn't do this for herself. She smiled when Libby ran towards them and scooped up two Vladimir and Sergei bears, before running back to her with one under each small arm, her green eyes wide with anticipation. "So you found what you really wanted, huh?" she asked, briefly wondering if Libby's unusual enthusiasm about the dress had just been a way of skipping straight to the bears and the ice cream. She shook her head for a second, knowing that though Libby could be as manipulative as any other three-year-old, she was rarely inclined to pull that kind of trick when clothes were involved. In that respect, Lorna knew, she was just like her mother.

"Mommy! I like my dress!" Libby replied, as if to confirm that her intentions had been pure. Then she smiled, hugging the bears to herself. "But I like my Vladimir and Sergei too."

"Well, I guess we'd better go buy them, hadn't we?" Lorna said, leading Libby over to the nearest checkout before she had a sudden brainwave. She knelt down and said "Would you like to buy them yourself? I have some money here that you can use if you do."

For a moment, Libby looked very surprised, as if she couldn't quite believe what her mother had just said. "Can I, Mommy?"

"Sure. Here you go," Lorna replied, with a small smile. Opening her purse, she drew out a one-hundred rouble note and pressed it into Libby's small hand, before the two of them joined the nearest queue. When they got to the checkout desk, the cashier initially looked at Lorna before she was redirected to look down at Libby, who held out her bears and her money shyly.

"Hi," she said, flushing pink a little. "Can I buy these?"

"Magic word, Libby," Lorna scolded gently.

"Please?" Libby added. The cashier smiled, and took the note from her, opening her till and placing it inside.

"Thank you," she said, smiling at Libby as she handed over a handful of change and bagged up the toys. "Have a nice day, miss."

"Say thank you," Lorna admonished her daughter, who was busily looking into the bag to see whether she could take one of the toys out. Libby flushed pink again, and mumbled a thank you, which Lorna supposed would have to do. When they were walking away from the till, she said "There. Didn't that make you feel like a big girl?"

"It was fun!" Libby exclaimed, beaming. "Can I do it again?"

"Sure, honey," Lorna said. "Would you like to help me get our ice-cream?"

"Yes, please, Mommy!" Libby said eagerly. "Can we get some strawberry?"

"Today you can have whatever you like," Lorna replied, feeling a wonderful sense of liberation just from saying those seven words. Grasping Libby's small hand, she led her towards the elevator that would take them to the top level of the store, and the restaurant that was situated there. "Come on - let's go get that ice-cream."

When Libby had asked for their order, Lorna put the bowls on a tray and found a table close to the ladies' bathroom. She knew Libby would probably need to go soon, given her daughters past track record, so she decided it was better to be safe than sorry. When she and Libby had sat down, she tucked into her portion and felt the explosion of rich, cold flavour spreading itself through her mouth. This was luxury, she decided - and seeing as there was precious little of that to be found elsewhere, she was going to savour every last mouthful. It was only when she had put down her spoon after her last mouthful that she felt her enjoyment of the moment shatter like glass on concrete.

"Hey, darlin'," came a voice that she had hoped she wouldn't hear for a good while yet. Jim Logan stepped around her table and planted himself in the seat directly opposite her, right next to where Libby was sitting, her face smeared with pink ice cream.

"Uncle Jim!" she cried as she noticed him, and reached over to give him a hug. Lorna quickly took hold of her arm and drew her around the table so that she could hold onto her. "Mommy!" she complained in a loud voice. "I want to say hi to Uncle Jim!"

"He's not your Uncle Jim," Lorna admonished her sternly, keeping her eyes fixed firmly on Logan as she spoke, "and I don't want you anywhere near him, do you understand me?" Libby squawked in dismay, but Lorna ignored her. She picked Libby up, despite her struggles, and put her in her lap, lacing her hands together over Libby's stomach. Libby squirmed and grumbled indignantly until she realised that her mother wasn't going to let go, and then sulkily fell silent. "What are you doing here, Jim?" Lorna demanded, her anger almost palpable. "Were you following me the whole time?"

"Not all the way," Logan said, as if he thought that that would make her feel any less disturbed. "I only caught your scent a couple of blocks back -"

Lorna snorted in contempt, cutting him off. "And that makes this any better? What do you want?"

"To apologise again to you and your daughter," Logan replied simply. "And to warn you that the Red Army is goin' to get a lot more serious about those new armoured suits in a very short time. Kitty and Jamie saw them in Central Park, and they were really puttin' those things to the test. Not one of them left that practice without a few chunks knocked out of their suit. I think they're going to get proactive really soon - you might even start seein' those on the streets before too long."

"No offence, Jim, but that's your problem, not mine," Lorna said, her tone flat. "As long as Libby's safe, I don't really care what the Russians do."

"Well, that's just it, isn't it?" Logan replied. "With those things on the streets, nobody's going to be safe. Who knows what they'll start doing?"

Lorna sighed. "Let me say this one more time, Jim, just so you really understand where I'm coming from: your problem, not mine." She kissed Libby on the crown of her head, and gently gave her daughter an encouraging squeeze. "In fact, I think I'll feel a lot safer with those armoured guys pounding a beat in my neighbourhood. What the fuck have you and your gun-nut buddies done for this city except blow it to hell? Why the fuck should I see you as the good guys when all you've done is shoot good people trying to do their jobs, and scare the living shit out of my baby girl? Fuck you, Jim. Fuck you to hell." She pointed towards the entrance of the dining area. "Now get the fuck away from me before I start screaming. I mean it, Jim. Just leave us alone."

"Okay, kid. Okay," Logan said quickly, holding his hands up as if to ward off an attack. "I get the message." He eased himself out of his seat and stood, smoothing out his leather jacket and check shirt, and then put his battered cowboy hat back on. "I'm sorry I scared Libby, and I'm sorry you feel the way you do, but I'm really trying to make this country free again. One day it will be. You'll see." Then he turned on his heel and hurried out, making sure not to catch the eye of the few Red Army personnel that were sat in the restaurant.

"Yeah, and I bet you'll send me the good news via flying pig," Lorna spat sarcastically in his direction as he left. "Asshole."

"Mommy... you said lots of bad words," Libby scolded her, tugging at her clothes and dragging her attention back to where it should have been in the first place. "You shouldn't say those words."

"I shouldn't, should I?" Lorna replied, instantly cheered up. She held her hand up and continued "I think you should give me a spanking for being a bad girl, don't you?" Libby nodded, laughing, and whacked Lorna's hand with her own tiny fingers. Lorna felt the sting in the blow, reflecting again on just how strong Libby was getting as she grew. Briefly, she wondered if perhaps that was a sign of any future mutation, and then decided not to think about that any more if Libby was a mutant, aside from the obvious fact that her hair was green, there was plenty of time to work out what to do about it later. She took a deep breath, ran her hands through her own hair, and then looked down at Libby, smiling broadly. There was only one place she wanted to be right now, and she was fairly sure Libby wouldn't have any objections to going there, either as long as she was given a good motive. "You know, I think we should go home and get Vladimir and Sergei out of their boxes, so that Flossie-Bell can meet her new friends. What do you think?"

"Yay!" Libby hooted, overjoyed, her delicate features flushing with excitement. "Let's go, Mommy!"

"Well, I guess well have to go if it appeals that much," Lorna replied with a chuckle, ruffling her daughters hair gently and lifting her down onto the ground, before she stood up, tucked her t-shirt into her jeans, and carried her tray over to the central collection point. After that, it didn't take much effort for her to get Libby out of the store and into a cab, and from there back to their apartment building. "Keep the change," Lorna told the driver, unrolling another hundred-rouble note from the bundle in her purse and slapping it into his greasy palm. "Go buy yourself an air-freshener."

Taking a few deep breaths to clear her nose of the cab's pungent odour, she picked up her bags with one hand and drew Libby up to the door with the other. Pinned to the outside of the door was a note in her mothers handwriting. Lorna reached up and pulled the note off the door, unfolding it and giving its contents a quick scan. It read  _Gone shopping. Dinner's in the oven, honey. See you later - Love, Mom._  Lorna raised her eyebrows and then folded the note in half, slipping it into a pocket of her jeans before she opened her door. When she and Libby were back in her apartment, she emptied her hands and went to the kitchen to make herself a cup of coffee, keeping an eye on her daughter as she did so. She watched Libby tearing open the packaging of her new dolls, introducing them excitedly to Flossie-Bell and setting up a miniature tea party with her set of plastic cups. When Lorna had finished making her drink, she went back into the lounge and sat down on her couch, leaning forwards so that she could see what Libby was doing.

"Look, Mommy!" Libby said excitedly, gesturing to where she had arranged her dolls in a circle. "Flossie-Bell and Vladimir really like each other!"

Lorna nodded thoughtfully. "Wow, I guess they do. Can I join in?"

"Sure!" Libby said, moving aside as Lorna sat down beside her and picked up Sergei, walking the toy up to where Libby had placed the other two dolls and picking up a tea-cup so that she could raise it to the dolls mouth.

"Yum!" Lorna said, grinning. "He looks like he's enjoying himself too!" She chuckled as Libby started chattering happily away to herself, patted her daughter gently on the top of her head and then stood up to walk back into the kitchen so that she could put her mug into her sink. As she was doing so, her door reverberated as someone pounded on it heavily, making both Lorna and Libby look around to see exactly who could have made such a noise. "Mom?" Lorna called cautiously. "Is that you?"

"Open the door, citizen!" said a harsh, razor-edged female voice on the other side of the door. "Open the door or we will be forced to break it down. Please do not force us to make that choice - we know you have a young child in there with you, and we do not wish to scare her."

 _How considerate,_  Lorna thought sourly. "Okay, I'm just coming!" she called aloud, slipping the door off its chain and opening it wide to reveal four well-armed Soviet soldiers and a black-clad officer with a KGB insignia on the peak of her cap, which she took off and tucked under her arm as she met Lorna's gaze. Lorna felt her stomach turn with instant, ice-cold fear, knowing that Red Army soldiers turning up at her door would have been bad enough, but a KGB officer accompanying them was even worse. "How... how can I help you, ma'am?" she said, trying not to show how afraid she was.

The KGB woman smiled thinly. "I am Major Regan Wyngarde. May I come in?"

"Of course," Lorna said, cold trickles of sweat soaking her t-shirt as she stepped away from the door and gestured for the officer and soldiers to take a seat in her lounge. As she sat down on Lorna's sofa, the KGB officer unbuttoned her greatcoat, and Lorna caught a flash of cobalt-blue steel in a holster at her waist. Libby whimpered as the soldiers gathered around their commander, so Lorna quickly said "Can you give me a second, please? I need to see to my daughter."

Wyngarde spread her hands briefly. "Do what you must," she said. "Despite what you might think, we KGB people aren't entirely without mercy. I can only apologise that we've frightened her." She smiled at Libby, trying to look as friendly as possible. "Hi there," she said, in what Lorna imagined she thought was a kindly tone. "We're just here to see your mom. We'll be gone soon." Uncertainly, Libby looked at her mother with saucer-wide eyes.

"Mommy?" she asked, as if asking for confirmation.

"It's all right, sweetheart," Lorna replied. "The nice lady only wants to ask me some questions. She really won't be here long." She smiled at Libby as warmly as she could, and then moved to pick her up and take her into her bedroom along with her toys, trying to still her quiet shudders of fear by putting Flossie-Bell into her small hands. "Now I want you and Flossie-Bell to sit and play here in your room, and then I'll come and get you when I've finished talking to the nice lady. Can you be a big girl for me, Libby?"

"Yes, Mommy," Libby mumbled, looking at the ground. Lorna tipped her chin up with one hand so that she could meet her daughter's gaze.

"Good girl. Now you go and have fun, honey." Kissing Libby on the forehead again, she hugged her daughter to her and then closed the door. Standing up, Lorna ran her hands through her hair, took a deep breath, and then turned around. "So what can I do for you, ma'am?" she asked as confidently as she could.

"Well now," Wyngarde began, a cobra's smile spreading across her lips. "Let me confirm something first: you  _are_  Lorna Dane, are you not?"

Lorna didn't know what this was in aid of, so she decided to play along with whatever game the Soviet officer was playing. "Yes, I am."

"Good. I'd hate to have disturbed you unnecessarily." Wyngarde said, nodding as if she was ticking off a mental checklist. "And you're employed as an... exotic dancer, yes?"

"That's right," Lorna said, feeling a little puzzlement creeping into her thoughts underneath her fear. "Look, whatever you think I might have done, I -"

"You're not the one we're concerned about, Miss Dane," Major Wyngarde said, cutting her off abruptly. As she did so, Lorna felt an involuntary shudder of relief run down her spine. "What we're investigating is the fact that you might have important information we require on a known terrorist. What do you know about James Logan?" She smiled coldly again. "Believe me when I say you'd be doing us a tremendous favour if you were to pass on what you know - and the KGB doesn't forget who it owes favours to."

Lorna paused for a moment, thinking about what she ought to say. "I'm sorry, I don't know who you're talking about -" she began.

"Don't test my patience, Lorna," Wyngarde snapped, looking visibly irritated. "We know for a fact that you have had contact with him, so please don't bother trying to deny it. What has he been asking you to do for him?"

"I just pass on information," Lorna said simply. "That's all."

"I see," Wyngarde replied, steepling her gloved fingers. "And how do you obtain this information, may I ask?"

"Russian soldiers tell me things, when they're drunk," Lorna said, deciding to carefully omit the more sordid aspects of her methods. "Jim comes to me every few days so that I can give him what I find out."

"Where does this exchange happen?" Wyngarde asked. "Do you have a set meeting place, or do you choose different places every time?"

Lorna shrugged. "Usually we see each other at the club, after I've finished dancing. Most of the time, I don't really expect to see him, though he just shows up in my dressing room whenever he feels like it."

"That doesn't sound very efficient," Wyngarde said, a little puzzled. "Why would such an accomplished terrorist be so careless?"

"Your guess is as good as mine, ma'am," Lorna replied. "I've never really known how Jim does his business, and I don't want to find out. I have a daughter to think about, you know - it's too dangerous for me to get involved any more than I am already. You understand that, don't you?"

"Yes," Wyngarde said, after a pause. "Yes, I do." Then she crossed her legs and folded her hands around her uppermost knee. "I'll cut to the chase, Miss Dane: the KGB would like you to help us capture James Logan. Your close contact with him is probably our best way to take him off the street."

"Pardon me for saying so, ma'am," Lorna took a deep breath, weighing up how wise it would be to follow through with her question, "but Jim once told me that you captured him once already, and his friends still managed to rescue him. What's to stop them doing it again?"

Wyngarde's eyes narrowed and Lorna was afraid that she might lose her temper, but then she composed herself with some difficulty and said "Yes, he did escape us once, but with your help we can make sure he doesn't do it a second time, and we can stop his terrorist activities once and for all. Are you willing to help us do this?"

"That depends," Lorna said. "If I do this, will you leave my daughter and me alone? Can you guarantee me that Libby will never have to see soldiers in my house again?"

"Anything you want, Miss Dane," Wyngarde said, with a brief shrug.

Lorna paused for a moment, conflicting thoughts racing through her mind. Then she felt her fists clenching, and the right choice forced its way to the front of her mind. "Okay, sure," she said simply. "If it'll keep Libby safe, I'll do whatever you want me to do..."


	6. Zero Hour

Half an hour after the KGB woman had left her apartment, Lorna was still sitting with Libby cradled in her arms. The television was on, but Lorna was barely watching it, her head still brimming over with conflicting emotions as she pondered whether or not she had really done the right thing by telling the Wyngarde woman everything she knew about Jim Logan and his resistance movement – on the one hand, she felt guilty about having betrayed the resistance to the Red Army after so many years of helping them to carry out what they called their "campaign of defiance against a brutal occupier", but on the other, she felt terribly angry at them for what they had done to her, and more importantly what they had done to her daughter. It was that fury that had made her do what she did, and it was for that reason that any feelings of regret were getting smaller as time passed. For Jim Logan to have almost robbed her of the one person who gave her life any meaning was, Lorna thought, an unforgivable crime.

When her mother returned home wearily with an armful of groceries, Libby squeaked with excitement and then hopped off Lorna's lap, dashing to the door to fling her arms around her legs. "Grandma!" she cried, excited. "You're back!"

"Yes, I am," her grandmother replied, ruffling Libby's frizzy green hair after setting her bags down on the work surface in the kitchen. "Did you have a good day while I was gone?"

Libby stuck out her lower lip in a dismayed pout. "No," she said, sounding deeply annoyed. "I was watching cartoons and then this nasty woman came to visit Mommy. I had to sit in my room and play with my dollies until she went away." She scowled deeply. "They were here a long time."

"Oh no," Lorna's mother said, one hand covering her mouth for a second or two. "Is that true, honey?"

"Yeah," Lorna said, getting up and hugging her mother briefly while Libby ambled over to where her colouring books sat in a small pile, and started busily scrawling in them with some well-used crayons, apparently forgetting completely about what had happened to her earlier. "A KGB officer paid us a visit and wanted to know whatever I knew about Jim Logan and the resistance – so I told her everything I could."

"After they gave you all that money?" Her mother looked dumbfounded. "Why?"

"Why do you think?" Lorna asked flatly. "Those idiots nearly got Libby killed. Just because they gave me a pile of money to try to say sorry, that doesn't change the fact that they almost took away the one thing that matters to me. Everything I've done for the past three years, I've done for her – including this. All I want is for her to be safe." She sighed, putting a hand to her brow in exasperation. "Come on, Mom, you must know what I'm talking about! Wouldn't you have done the same thing if you were in my position?"

Her mother opened her mouth for a moment, as if to deny Lorna's accusation, but then her shoulders slumped and she nodded. "You're right, darling, I would have done the same thing. You were always the most important thing to your father and me when you were a little girl. I would have thrown myself in front of a bullet to save you, so I know exactly where you're coming from – but do you really think it was wise to make an enemy of Jim Logan? He's got eyes and ears all over this city, just like the Russians do – and even he has limits to how forgiving or generous he's willing to be. Sooner or later he'll find out about what you've done, and sooner or later he'll come looking for answers. Are you ready for that, Lorna? I'm not sure I am."

Lorna clenched the muscles in her jaw, feeling an involuntary shudder run down her spine. Then she closed her fists tightly, feeling her fingernails digging painfully into her palms. "I'm not afraid of Jim Logan, Mom. I've known him for years. I'm not scared of the KGB – so why should I be scared of him?"

Her mother glared at her. "You should be scared of him because of what I'm about to say," she snapped. She paused guiltily then, taking a deep breath and composing herself. Then, when she was ready to speak again, she continued "You remember your father was a police officer? Well, when he was just starting out as a detective thirty years ago, he told me about something the police's resistance informants told him while they were letting him know where the resistance was planning to attack next. They said that most of the time, Jim Logan was a really nice person – someone who could make friends with anybody, if he wanted to."

"So why should I be scared of that?" Lorna asked, feeling a little puzzled. "If he's such a good guy –"

"Because that's not all they told him," he mother said, ominously. "They told him that even though Logan was a good man, his temper could be really frightening. When he used to lead squads of resistance fighters himself, he'd lose control in really bad fights and just... tear the Russian soldiers to pieces with his bare hands. There was never much left of them afterwards. That's the whole reason he stopped doing it himself, and started letting other people fill his shoes. He's dangerous, Lorna – no matter how good he can be."

"Why do the resistance still follow him, if he's that much of a liability?" Lorna asked, feeling another unwelcome stab of apprehension in the back of her mind. "And how long has he been doing this? He only looks like he's in his forties, but if he was already leading the resistance when Dad was young... just how old is he?"

"Nobody seems to know," her mother replied, raising her eyebrows briefly. "Your father said that even his contacts had no idea, and they'd been working with the man for years – decades, in some cases. It sounds as if he's been around far longer than he should have been. How he managed that, I don't know." She paused. "As to why the resistance still follows him... your guess is as good as mine. From what your dad used to tell me, though, Logan's soldiers all seem to have an amazing respect for the man, regardless of his faults. Perhaps they all think that the ends justify the means, I don't know."

Lorna walked over to the window, putting her hands on the sill and looking out on the street below her, its pavement littered with junk and several cars scarred with various shades of neon spray paint. She saw that her bike was unscathed, though, which she was grateful for. Then she turned and rested against the wall, running her hands through her hair. "So what am I going to do now?"

"Well, for now," her mother began, glancing at her watch, "you ought to be getting to work. Don't you have an early shift tonight?"

"Damn, you're right," Lorna cursed, briefly looking at her own watch. "We'll have to talk about this some more when I get back." She pushed herself off the wall and walked over to where Libby was busily scrawling red crayon all over the picture of a clown she had open in front of her. "Wow!" she said excitedly, kneeling down and examining the picture. "That looks great!"

"Do you like it, Mommy?" Libby asked.

"Do I like it?" Lorna repeated. "I love it!"

"So can you help me?" Libby asked, before holding out the crayon she was clutching in her right hand.

"I have to go to work now, honey," Lorna told her gently, and felt her heart shatter as Libby's face crumpled with disappointment. Then she pointed towards her mother, and said "But maybe you could ask Grandma? I'm sure she'd like to help – wouldn't you, Grandma?"

"Of course I would," her mother said, and then sat down in the chair closest to where Libby was sitting. Libby clambered up next to her and laid the colouring book out on her legs. "What colour would you like me to use?" Libby handed her a well-used blue crayon and the two of them set about giving the clown a little more colour.

Lorna smiled. "I'll see you later, Mom."

"Bye sweetie," her mother replied absently, as Lorna fetched her kitbag and her usual supplies from her bedroom and then ran down the dirty, badly-maintained stairwell to reach her bike. When she reached it, she ran the strap of her bag around herself, used the bike's kick-start to bring its engine to life, and then set off on her journey towards the bar. The trip was a little slower than usual, because it was still early enough for vehicles other than Russian armour to be out on the road, but Lorna still managed to get to where she needed to be with plenty of time to spare. When she pulled up across the street from the bar, she unhooked her bag's strap from around her body and then slung it over her shoulder before making her way towards the back entrance. She opened the door and slipped quietly inside, intent on finding her dressing room as quickly as she could.

As soon as she closed the door, though, one of the other dancers, a tall, dark-haired girl called Jessica, waved at her cheerfully. "Hey, honey," she said in excitement, some of her freshly-washed hair leaving droplets of water on her shoulders. "Looks like a busy night out there – I just finished my dance and I ended up with at least two hundred roubles in tips. Do well and you might just earn enough to get Libby a little present."

"She's had enough treats this week to last her a little while," Lorna replied, quietly. "I got her a couple of Vladimir and Sergei toys, so she'll have to be happy with those."

Jessica frowned at Lorna's slightly downcast expression. "You okay, sweetie? You don't look yourself."

"I had a visit from a KGB officer today," Lorna said, running a hand through her hair and taking a deep breath. "You can imagine what fun that was."

"Oh God," Jessica replied, putting her hands over her mouth in shock. "Why would the KGB want to talk to you?"

"They wanted to know what I know about Jim Logan," Lorna said flatly. "They wouldn't leave until I told them everything I knew about him."

"And did you?" Jessica pressed, laying a hand on Lorna's tightly clenched fist.

"Of course I did!" Lorna snapped, flushing with anger and drawing back her hand abruptly. "What other choice did I have? They might have hurt Libby or my mom if I hadn't, and Libby needs me too much for me to let the Russkies kill me because I didn't do as I'm told." She paused, taking a deep breath to calm herself down a little. "Besides, one of them might have been one of those mind-readers I hear the Ivans like to use. Even if I'd lied, they'd probably still have taken what they wanted anyway – so I didn't have many options any way you want to look at it."

"I guess not," Jessica replied, shrugging. "But you know I'll be right there if you want to talk about it any more, right?" She hugged Lorna and then pointed towards the door. "I gotta get going, honey – my dinner's not gonna make itself, you know?"

"Sure. See you later, Jess," Lorna said, before she set her jaw tightly and then made her way to her dressing room. Setting her bag down on the floor near her dressing table, she hung her jacket up on the door's hook and then set about changing into her costume for the evening. It was a tightly-cut Russian officer's uniform and cap, which were both emblazoned with the hammer and sickle symbol of the Red Army. She opened the first few buttons of her shirt to expose just enough of her pushed-together bosom to make it look enticing, with all the bored precision that came from years of practice. With that done, she applied a careful amount of hairspray to give her hair a suitable amount of bounce, which she knew she'd need if she was to make her appearance that much more appealing to the off-duty soldiers that made up a large section of her clientele – anything to get them to throw more money at her, after all... and perhaps get them to divulge information while they were drunk and clawing clumsily at her naked body. She shuddered at the thought that she'd endured that for so long, just to help Jim Logan wage his petty little war.

Pushing those memories out of her mind, she took a deep breath and finished getting herself prepared before she pushed open her dressing room door and walked towards the backstage area, readying herself for her grand entrance.  _Time to put my game-face on,_  she thought, and flung the curtain aside with a flourish. The whoops of the crowd drowned out anything else she might have been thinking, forcing her to focus on the dance above everything else. It took her twenty minutes to complete her routine, and when she was finished, she swept up the handfuls of ten-rouble notes that lay scattered across the stage, thrown there by her rapturous audience. Jessica had been right, it seemed – judging from how many notes she was picking up, the crowd was in an unusually generous mood tonight. She supposed that almost made up for her foul mood earlier. Almost.

When she was backstage again, she pulled on the robe that was waiting for her and walked to her dressing room to freshen up, shower and get changed into some fresh clothes before she left for the evening. After running a comb through her wet hair a few times, she hoisted her kit-bag onto her shoulder and walked out to her bike, sitting astride it wearily. She revved the throttle a few times just to warm up the engine a little, and sent a few pungent, wispy clouds of grey exhaust fumes billowing away into the evening air. Then she pulled out of the bar's parking lot and began her journey home. It was a little less busy than earlier, but the amount of Russian armour on the streets was beginning to increase, as it usually did when the evening's curfew was approaching. Lorna made sure to give any passing armoured personnel carriers or tanks a wide berth, in case the soldiers inside them decided to flex their muscles a few hours earlier than usual. It wasn't a high risk, but it was a risk she didn't want to gamble on; not tonight, anyway. She much preferred the thought of getting home in time to read Libby a bedtime story, something she hadn't been able to do for what seemed like an eternity. She decided that she would read Libby one of her favourite books,  _Vladimir Goes To Town_ , which she remembered had delighted both of them the first time they'd read it together. She hoped it would do the same again.

That hope curdled into fear when she arrived at her apartment block and discovered that the door to her apartment was ajar, with no sound coming from inside. The lights were all still on, and she could smell the distinctive scent of overcooked meat, and hear the sizzle of a frying pan, but other than that she couldn't hear a thing – and given how noisy Libby could be, that was terrifying. "Mom? You here?" she called. "Libby, honey? Can you tell Mommy where you are?" Then she rounded the counter of the kitchen and saw her mother slumped on the floor, a small corona of blood pooling around her head. "Mom!" she cried, dropping to her knees next to her mother and touching her fingers to her throat. She let out a relieved breath as she felt a pulse – a weak one, but a pulse nonetheless. Then, examining the blood surrounding her mother's head with a fingertip, she was surprised to find that it hadn't dried quite yet, and was still sticky in places. That meant that whoever had caused this had only been here recently... but that fact was irrelevant as long as she didn't know where Libby was. "Libby? Where are you?" she called again as she got to her feet, feeling her stomach lurching more and more with each passing moment. "Libby!" Almost running towards the door of her daughter's room, she flung it open to discover Libby lying in her bed, fast asleep, clutching Flossie-Bell to her tiny chest and murmuring incomprehensible words to herself. Relief flooded through Lorna's body like a torrent of icy water as she let out the breath she'd been holding in since pushing open the door. She closed it quietly, turned and made her way back to the kitchen area to see what she could do for her unconscious mother. Rinsing a cloth, she started to soak up the gluey, half-dried blood from around her mother's head, taking care to be as gentle as possible. The cloth soon became sodden and red, so she stood up to squeeze it out into the sink – only to find Jim Logan leaning against her front door, his arms crossed and his eyes burning with barely-controlled anger.

"We need to talk, you an' me," he said coldly, pushing himself off the door and curling his hands into fists as he started to advance towards her.

"I have nothing to say to you," Lorna snarled, hoping that her bravado would help disguise the sickening, nauseating fear which was suddenly churning in her guts. "Get out."

Logan's lip curled in contempt. "Maybe you ain't got somethin' to say to  _me_ ," he said, "but I sure as hell got somethin' to say to  _you_. You betrayed me. You betrayed the resistance." He held up his right hand, and his bone claws punched out from between the knuckles with a wet tearing of flesh and a few small trickles of blood. Lorna swallowed nervously. She had always known about Logan's claws, but she had never seen them this close up – and she had certainly never expected to be on the wrong end of them. "I ain't gonna let you get away with that."

"How did you –" Lorna began, confused as to how Logan could have found out about her talk with the KGB officer so quickly.

"You should be careful who you talk to," Logan said simply, snorting in contempt. "See, your friend Jessie... is also  _my_  friend Jessie. She told me about it before you'd even finished dancin'."

Lorna felt her guts churn as she realised she had effectively damned herself, and that she should have trusted her mother's advice. "So, what, this is the part where you kill me?" she said, still desperately trying to keep a note of defiance in her voice. "My daughter –"

"– is the only reason why I ain't gonna kill you," Logan finished. "But just 'cause I ain't gonna  _kill_  you, don't mean I ain't gonna  _cut_  you." He smirked, dark inspiration crossing his hairy features for a moment, and he glanced at the extended claws on his right hand. "These things can slice you open right down to the bone. How much do you think your new Russkie pals are gonna want to see a stripper with those kinds of scars?"

"Jim, you wouldn't – you couldn't –" Lorna stammered, icy terror beginning to build in the pit of her stomach as she started to back away from Logan. He matched her movement step-for-step. "Libby –"

"Don't think your kid's goin' to save you again," Logan snapped, and extended the claws on his left hand. "I only got so much mercy in me. Time to pay the piper, toots." As he doubled his pace, Lorna began scrambling backwards into the kitchen area, trying desperately to keep as much distance between him and herself as she could, until she realised she had nowhere else to go. She backed up right against the oven, the handle of the frying pan still on the hob jabbing into her spine, and saw Logan coming ever closer. He stepped over her mother's prone body and then clenched his fists even tighter. "Bad choice, darlin'," he said as he finally cornered her. "First rule of bein' a resistance fighter: always plan your escape route. Looks like you never woulda made the grade." Then he lunged at her with one set of claws, aimed low at her belly – and got a faceful of boiling fat and burnt meat. Lorna had managed to grasp the handle of the frying pan behind her and had waited until the last possible moment to swing its contents right into Logan's eyes. She could hear them sizzling, and saw steaming trickles of blood weeping down his cheeks as he bellowed with rage. Knowing she only had a few moments before his eyes healed, she ran towards the front door and then hefted the heavy wooden baseball bat that her mother kept beside it in both hands. Then she sprinted towards Logan, using her momentum to smash the bat fiercely into the side of his head, screaming wordlessly as she did so. The only sound it made was a dull thud, the thick wood momentarily scoring a coarse, gruesome bruise across the surface of Logan's left temple. He swayed a little, his expression going blank. Then his legs gave way and he dropped to the floor without a sound. Breathing hoarsely, Lorna managed to aim one hard kick directly into Logan's groin before she realised just exactly what she'd done. Panic replaced her anger, and she couldn't think straight for a moment. Then she realised exactly what she had to do, and ran over to the phone that was screwed to the wall next to the kitchen counter. Grabbing the handset and running her other hand over the buttons in a well-practiced sequence, she tried to keep her breathing steady and her hands from shaking. The phone rang five times before somebody picked up at the other end, and when they did Lorna wasted no time in spilling out just exactly what had happened, almost without stopping to take a breath.

"You have to get here quickly, Frank," she said to her boss, trying to stop her voice from dissolving into sobs. "I need help moving him out of my apartment, and I need help  _now_. Please, Frank – I don't know when he'll wake up, but I know he'll be pretty pissed off when he does. I can't risk him hurting Libby or my mom."

"Okay, Lorna," Frank said calmly. "Stay calm, honey – I'll be right over. We'll get you out of this, I promise."

"Thanks, Frank," Lorna replied. "Get here as soon as you can." She hung the phone up almost absently as she turned back to where Logan was sprawled on the floor, his arms and legs splayed out awkwardly. She knew that she had to get him secured so that he couldn't get up when he inevitably came round, so she started to rummage in her closets to see if there was anything useful that she could use to tie him up. After ten minutes of searching, she finally found a length of curtain cord that her mother had been saving for some new lounge curtains. She knelt down behind Logan's prone form, pulled his arms behind his back and then wrapped the cord around his wrists, knotting it as tightly as she could, and then knotting it again just for good measure. Hooking both arms under his armpits, she heaved him up on a chair with difficulty, and then bound him to it with two thick leather belts she had found in her closet. It was pretty makeshift, she knew, but she hoped it would be enough.

It took Frank about twenty minutes to arrive, and when she opened the door to let him in, Lorna flung her arms around him tightly, finally letting out the tears she'd been holding in since hitting Logan with the bat. "Thank you, Frank," she said. "Thank you, thank you, thank you. I don't know what I'd have done without you."

"Hey, I'd have done the same for any of my girls," Frank said, shrugging, before he drew out the shotgun he kept behind the bar from the holster on his back. "Where's Logan?" Lorna pointed behind her to where Logan was tied up, and Frank whistled in surprise. "Damn, girl," he said. "Looks like you didn't need my help after all."

Lorna shook her head. "Well, I need help moving him. I can't keep him here, Frank, not when his resistance buddies are bound to come looking for him. One of them must know where he is – it won't be too long before they follow him here."

"I guess you're right," Frank said, scratching his chin thoughtfully. "Okay, you take his legs and I'll take his arms. We'll get him down in the elevator, put him in the back of my car, and then we'll worry about where we take him from there."

"You ain't takin' me anywhere, pal," Logan rasped through bloodied lips as he raised his head a little groggily, making both Lorna and Frank jump almost out of their skins. Then, as the two of them turned to look at him, he glared at them with slightly glazed eyes and continued "I ain't gonna go without a fight."

"Don't bet on it," Frank said, cracking him across the face with the butt of his shotgun and knocking him out cold again. Then he looked down at the little man as Logan's head lolled limply on his chest. "Damn. I was afraid that might happen," he said ruefully. "You definitely did the right thing tying him up like that."

"You... knew he might do that?" Lorna said, stunned. "How?"

Frank pulled one side of his mouth up in a rueful half-smile. "Hey, I wasn't always a bartender – I used to be a resistance fighter too, until I decided to give it up for my health. I saw Jimmy-boy here heal from a dozen different bullet wounds that would have killed you or me, and I saw him get back on his feet pretty quickly afterwards, too. You were lucky he was out for as long as he was." He shook his head, and then started to heave Logan off the seat after loosening the belts securing him to it. "Come on, kid – no time to waste."

"Okay," Lorna said, taking a deep breath and trying to compose herself a little. "Let's do it."

The two of them struggled out into the hallway, heaving Logan's limp form along the corridor and into the elevator. Lorna quickly stabbed the button that would take them right to the ground floor with one fingertip, and then waited for the elevator to come back to life. It managed to creak in annoyance once before it juddered into life and started to move downwards. Lorna cursed her landlord for the hundredth time, absurdly wondering at random just what it would take for the stingy old bastard to actually put some effort into maintaining the place. She cut that train of thought off sharply, though, as the elevator came to a grinding halt and its doors opened spasmodically. Gritting her teeth, she helped Frank carry Logan outside and then dump him in the trunk of his car, the belts that she had used to tie the little man to her chair firmly secured around his knees and ankles. When Frank was satisfied that the job was complete, he turned to Lorna and said "You're not coming with me, are you?"

Lorna shook her head. "No. I can't leave Libby or my mom."

"That's what I thought," Frank replied. "I'll have to find a manhole cover somewhere that I can dump this guy through, then. I'm sure he can find his way home once he wakes up – but I'll give one of my old resistance buddies a call just in case, and they can make sure he gets found. Jim might be an asshole, but even he doesn't deserve to lie in rat shit for days on end." He paused and ran a hand over his bald scalp. "Look... you have to get out of here, as quickly as you can. The resistance'll be looking for you as soon as they find their boss, and they won't be happy."

"I know," Lorna said, her expression downcast. "I've got an uncle in Maine I can call. If I tell him what the situation is, maybe he'll let Libby and me stay with him for a while until we can get settled somewhere else."

"Well, I hope it works out for you," Frank said. He brushed his hand against her chin then, an almost paternal look crossing his face. "Make a good life for yourself and Libby – both of you deserve it." He turned towards his car, opened the driver's side door and climbed in. Winding down his window he said "Take care of yourself, honey. I might ask you back as a special attraction one day, and I wouldn't want you to be anything less than perfect." He winked at her as he did so, making her laugh despite herself, and then he pushed down on his accelerator and drove off, leaving Lorna standing on the sidewalk by herself. She stayed where she was for a few moments before she went back inside, taking the stairs to her apartment this time, and then checked on Libby briefly before she picked up the phone and, feeling a renewed sense of security, finally called for some medical help.

After fifteen minutes, the paramedics that she had called for arrived and started to tend her mother's head wound. One of them, a slightly-built young man who looked like he had only just left medical school, stood up from where Lorna's mother was lying and turned towards Lorna. "Your mother doesn't seem to be too badly injured," he began, "but as with all head injuries, I'd prefer it if she was taken to hospital for overnight observation. There's always a chance that she might be concussed, and it would be better for her to be somewhere that can treat her as quickly as possible."

Lorna nodded. "Yes, of course. Let me go and get my daughter and I'll come with you. We can ride in the ambulance, I hope?" The young paramedic nodded, and after Lorna had, with some difficulty, woken Libby up, she followed the two paramedics down to where their ambulance was parked. The journey to the hospital was surprisingly quick, Lorna thought, but then she realised that the driver was probably taking some short-cuts as well as using the ambulance's siren to clear its path. When they arrived, her mother was quickly moved to where she needed to be, with doctors crowding round her in order to see what was wrong. It took several hours for them to leave Lorna and Libby alone with her, but Lorna was so tired that she didn't get to say a lot before she fell into as deep a sleep as Libby had been for the almost the entire time.

* * *

 

Three hours later, Lorna awoke with a start, finding Libby curled up in a chair next to her. "Hey," her mother said in a hoarse tone. "You know, I think  _I'm_  supposed to be the one who's sedated, young lady. What's your excuse?"

Lorna laughed despite herself. "Another wild night on the town, I guess." She leaned forwards and took one of her mother's hands in her own. "How are you feeling?"

"Sore," came the predictable response. "And I have a bump on my head the size of Delaware. Other than that, I'm fine."

"That's good to hear," Lorna said, before she bit her lip, suddenly afraid to say what she knew she had to say. "Look... I need to talk to you about what Frank told me earlier tonight."

"Is that your boss?" her mother asked, raising an eyebrow briefly. "What did he have to say that I need to hear? Did he try to get you to work double-shifts this week?"

"I wish he had," Lorna replied, sadly. "He said... he said I needed to get out of New York, and that I needed to get out quickly."

"What?" her mother exclaimed, stunned. "Why?"

"The resistance is going to be looking for me after this. They never take no for an answer, Mom – you know that. If I don't go, they'll keep coming for me, and I can't risk putting you or Libby in danger like that again."

"You're over-reacting –" her mother began.

"Look at where you are, Mom!" Lorna snapped back. "You wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for me!" She paused, to compose herself. "Look... if the resistance come again, who's to say they'll stop at just hurting you? I don't want either of you to end up on a slab because I made a stupid mistake. You and Libby mean the world to me, and it's because of that that I have to leave."

"All right," her mother said, downcast. "Let's say you do move. Where would you go?"

"I thought I could give Uncle Teddy a call," Lorna replied, with a slight shrug. "I know he's got room in his house for the two of us, and I'm hoping he'll help me get settled there. If I explain what the situation is, maybe he'll let me go sooner rather than later."

"It's worth a try, I suppose," her mother said thoughtfully. "Teddy's a good man – even if he doesn't act like it sometimes – and he always had so much time for you when you were a little girl. I'm sure he'll jump at the chance to have you and Libby living with him. I imagine he'll want you to get a job while you're with him, though – he never was one for keeping freeloaders around for too long. Do you have any idea what you're going to do?"

"Well, I can tell you right now that I don't plan on working in some dirty little convenience store for the rest of my life," Lorna replied. "Maybe I'll waitress for a while, but when I've saved some money from that... I thought that I could try being a teacher." She smiled. "I mean, I've been passing on information for the past five years anyway – I think it's about time I tried doing it for a good reason."

"That sounds like a good plan," her mother replied. "I'm sure Teddy would be happy to help you with that if he could. Talk to him about it when you call him, and see what he says."

"Thanks, Mom – I'll do that," Lorna said, and immediately felt a weight lifting off her soul. For the first time in a long time, she felt free – and that was a feeling she intended to hold onto for as long as she could.

END.


End file.
